Jim Tomlinson grew up in a small northern Illinois town and lived for many years in a small New England town. He lives now in rural Kentucky with his wife, fiber artist Gin Petty. Jim's stories have appeared in Five Points, Shenandoah, Bellevue Literary Review, New Stories From The South and elsewhere. His fiction has been shortlisted for both Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery Stories. Along with the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, Jim is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship to Sewanee Writers Conference. His most recent book of stories, Nothing Like An Ocean, is the follow-up to his debut collection, Things Kept, Things Left Behind, which won the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award.