Native Texan novelist, essayist, scholar, and literary critic Clay Reynolds is the author over 1,000 publications ranging from scholarly studies to short fiction and poems, essays, critical reviews and twenty published volumes. A Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, he is Director of Creative Writing. He holds academic degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, Trinity University, and a PhD from the University of Tulsa. His published novels include The Vigil, Agatite, Franklin's Crossing, Players, Monuments, and The Tentmaker, Ars Poetica, Threading the Needle, a collection of essays, Of Snake and Sex and Playing in the Rain, and a collection of short fiction, Sandhill County Lines. His newest novel is Vox Populi, a Novel of Everyday Life. His nonfiction books, authored and edited, include Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama, Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook, A Hundred Years of Heroes: A Centennial History of the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show, Twenty Questions: Answers for the Inquiring Writer, The Plays of Jack London, and Hero of a Hundred Fights: The Western Dime Novels of Ned Buntline. His novels, short fiction, and essays have won numerous regional and national awards, including the Violet Crown Award, which has received twice for fiction, and a Spur Award for short fiction; he is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Reynolds lives in Lowry Crossing, a rural community near McKinney, Texas, with his wife Judy, a Medical Technologist