William H. Gass is the distinguished author of three novels (Omensetter’s Luck, Willie Masters’ Lonely Wife, and The Tunnel); two volumes of short stories (In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Cartesian Sonata) and six collections of essays, including, most recently Tests of Time (University of Chicago Press, 2003).  Holder of a Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University, Gass was a philosophy professor at Washington University from 1966 – 2000, and Director of that university’s International Writers Center from 1990 until 2000. He has been the recipient of many awards honoring his writing, including the Pen-Nabokov Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and National Book Critics Circle Awards for Criticism in 1985, 1996, and 2003, among others.