Michael Gills was McKean Poetry Fellow at the University of Arkansas and Randall Jarrell Fellow in Fiction in the MFA Program at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He earned the Ph.D. in Creative Writing/Fiction at the University of Utah. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Oxford American, Verb 4, Shenandoah, Boulevard, The Gettysburg Review, The Greensboro Review, Quarterly West, New Stories From The South and elsewhere. Why I Lie: Stories (University of Nevada Press, September, 2002) was selected by The Southern Review as a top literary debut of 2002. A 2005-06 Utah Established Artist Fellowship recipient, Gills is a contributing writer for Oxford American and a board member for Writers @ Work. He is currently a professor of writing for the Honors College at the University of Utah.
