Jaimy Gordon was born in Baltimore, studied at Antioch College and at Brown University and now teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. She was awarded numerous prizes, for example in 1991 the Academy Institute Award for Fiction by the American Academy of the American Institute of Arts and Letters. Her short story A Night's Work was included in the List of Best American Short Stories. So far Gordon has published two novels, poetry, plays, short stories and essays.