Joan­na Her­shon is the author of the nov­els Swim­ming, The Out­side of August, The Ger­man Bride, and A Dual Inher­i­tance. Her writ­ing has appeared in Gran­ta, The New York Times, One Sto­ry, Vir­ginia Quar­ter­ly Review, and two lit­er­ary antholo­gies, Brook­lyn Was Mine and Freud’s Blind Spot. She is an adjunct assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Cre­ative Writ­ing Depart­ment at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and lives in Brook­lyn with her hus­band, the painter Derek Buck­n­er, their twin sons, and their daughter.