Though Little Miseries is Kimberly Olson Fakih's debut of adult fiction, she has a long history in publishing. She worked at Harper before becoming a freelance contributor to newspapers (The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, etc.), magazines (School Library Journal, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, etc.), and books as a ghost writer. She published two anthologies for children, Of Cabbages and Kings 1 & 2, as well as a book of literary criticism, The Literature of Delight. Her children's books include Grandpa Putter & Granny Hoe, High on the Hog, and Off the Clock. Ruefully, regretfully, gleefully moving on from childhood (and it's about time!), I am a product of the Midwest but moved East decades ago. I have always loved cities more, starting with Minneapolis over St. Paul, then choosing New York over Cambridge, and currently eyeballing London. When you were a child, did you check out the limit at the library, with another stack on reserve? Me, too. If I saw a series on a shelf, I read the books in order, and if one was missing, it was a little death. I could never explain these things to other people. Somehow I knew not to try. My mother had a television with a five-inch screen in the kitchen and watched talk shows while she made dinner every afternoon. I took it up to my room after the house was dark and watched movies on the late show, and it seemed to me that so many of them were set in New York that it was the city adults with any sense moved to when they were finished growing up. Yes, there were murders in the big city, but if you've read my book, Little Miseries, there were murders close to home, as well. The closer I was to finishing college, the more worried I was, because I knew it was time to make good on that thought in the back of my head, "Time to move to New York." I did not want to. But I could not escape it. No one in my family has ever understood it, but to me, it was some geographic dysmorphia. I was not in the place I belonged.