I've written sixteen books, plus an art book (The World on Sunday) that I published with my wife Margaret Brentano. The most recent one is Substitute (2016), which is about working as a substitute teacher in Maine schools. Some earlier books are The Anthologist (2009), a novel about a poet trying to write an introduction to an anthology of rhyming verse; Human Smoke (2008), a book of nonfiction about the beginning of World War II, and U and I (1991), about the vagaries and jealousies of the writing life. My first novel, The Mezzanine, about a man riding an escalator on his lunch hour, came out in 1988. Occasionally I write for magazines. I grew up in Rochester, New York and went to Haverford College, where I majored in English. I live in Maine with my family.