Donald Ray Pollock grew up in Knockemstiff, Ohio, and quit high school at seventeeen to work in a meatpacking plant. He then spent thirty-two years employed as a laborer at the Mead Paper Corporation in Chillicothe, Ohio, before enrolling in the MFA program at Ohio State University. His first book, a collection of stories called Knockemstiff, won the 2009 PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship. This was followed by a novel, The Devil All The Time, which was listed as one of the top ten books of 2011 by Publisher's Weekly. His third book, a novel called The Heavenly Table, is forthcoming from Doubleday in July, 2016. Though pretty much a Luddite when it comes to computer stuff, he is now on Facebook (facebook.com/DonaldRayPollock) and also has a website at www.donaldraypollock.net.