Mickey Hess is the author of The Novelist and the Rapper, The Nostalgia Echo,Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory, Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide, Icons of Hip Hop, and Is Hip Hop Dead? He is an Associate Professor of English at Rider University. His articles on hip hop and related topics have been published in Popular Music and Society, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdiscplinary Study of Literature, Computers & Composition, and Composition Studies. His stories and essays have been published in Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: Best of McSweeney's Humor Category, Hawaii Review, Punk Planet, Ninth Letter, Pear Noir!, Quick Fiction, Front Porch, and others.