Michael Chabon earned an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His works include Wonder Boys (1995), numerous pieces of short fiction written in styles varying from Lovecraftian horror to steampunk, Sherlockian detective fiction to mainstream literary realism, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which won the Pulitzer Prize. In 2007, his novel The Yiddish Policeman’s Union won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards.

“Over the course of his life as a writer he…had become his own doppleganger, a malignant shadow who lived behind the mirrors and under the floorboards and behind the drapes of his own existence, haunting all of Q.’s personal relationships and all his commerce with the world; a being unmoved by tragedy, unconcerned with the feelings of others, disinclined to any human business but surveillance and recollection…assuming his double’s place long enough to do or say something reprehensible or unwise and thus to ensure that human misfortune—the constant object of all of Other Q.’s surveillance and the theme of all his recollections—continued unabated in Q.’s life. Otherwise, of course, he would have nothing to write about.”