Michelle Richmond is the author of four novels and two story collections. Her most recent books are GOLDEN STATE (February, 2014)--"a riveting read" (Booklist, starred review) that imagines present-day California on the brink of secession from the United States--and the story collection HUM (March 2014), winner of the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Her previous books are the New York Times bestseller THE YEAR OF FOG (2007), the novels NO ONE YOU KNOW (2008) and DREAM OF THE BLUE ROOM (2003), and the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress (2001). She is also the editor of two anthologies: MODERN SHORTS: 18 Stories From Fiction Attic Press (2014) and FLASH IN THE ATTIC: 33 VERY SHORT STORIES (2012).Michelle grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and has made her home for many years in Northern California. Visit michellerichmond.com for updates, reading group guides, and social media links.From the author: "For me, a novel always begins with a place and a character, and unfolds from there. My first two books are rooted in the Southern landscape of my childhood. Without the place out of which they grew, those books would not exist.My subsequent books--The Year of Fog, No One You Know, and my forthcoming novel, GOLDEN STATE--could, in my mind, only take place in the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco has been my home for a decade. It's the place that fills my days and my imagination, and it inevitably finds its way into my novels."