Bess Vanrenen works as an assistant editor at Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. She received her master of arts degree in English literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2004. She has lived in New Jersey, Egypt, Nevada, Florida, New York, and France. She had a brief stint waiting tables at a TGI Fridays in Paris, where she saw a small cockroach climbing across a tray of apple fritters. Her French coworkers seemed unperturbed. She has also worked a paper route (for one night), smiled at and greeted IHOP customers (where she received the laurels, “Employee of the Month”), chauffeured packages around her college campus and later sub sandwiches (though she was convinced the selling of sandwiches merely disguised the selling of more interesting, albeit illegal, substances), and provided elderly folks with debatably humorous holiday cards.