TOD DAVIES is the author of Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking With What You’ve Got, and Snotty Saves the Day: The History of Arcadia. Inspired by the work she did with teenagers in England, Snotty Saves the Day is her first book of fiction. Unsurprisingly, her attitude toward literature is the same as her attitude toward cooking—it’s all about working with what you have to find new ways of looking and new ways of being, and in doing so, to rediscover the best of our humanity and work toward a better world. Davies now lives with her husband Alex, and her two dogs, in the alpine valley of Colestin, Oregon, surrounded by a mountain forest where the manuscript of Snotty Saves the Day was discovered under an old fir tree in the snow.