Tod Gold­berg is the author of more than a dozen books, includ­ing Gang­ster­land, a final­ist for the Ham­mett Prize; Gang­ster Nation; and The Low Desert: Gang­ster Sto­ries, named a South­west Book of the Year and a final­ist for sev­er­al lit­er­ary prizes. He lives in Indio, Cal­i­for­nia, where he directs the low-res­i­den­cy MFA in cre­ative writ­ing and writ­ing for the per­form­ing arts at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Riverside.