Karen Russell - Swamplandia!

To Carey McHugh, Kim Tingley, Lytton Smith, Michael White, Brandon Freeman, Lauren Russell, Kent Russell, Vince Ruiz — thank you to the moon for being my first readers and for the lifeline of your friendship. And thanks to Rob, Carey, New Rob, and Russell Haus for my many fellowship stints on your fine sofas. If I could somehow make this page interactive, I’d give each of you an ovation and a Cadillac.

I’m very grateful to the UCross Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Jean Strouse, and my fellow Fellows for the wonderful gift of time and community. Special thanks to Mary Ellen von der Heyden for her friendship and generous support.

Enormous thanks to my incredible agent, Denise Shannon, and to my boundlessly encouraging editor, Jordan Pavlin, for their faith in me and for their tremendous help with revisions. Thanks to the great Leslie Levine and the staff at Knopf. And to the brilliant and indefatigable fiction editor Carin Besser, for parachuting into this novel and helping me to find a way through— thank you .

This book is dedicated to my parents, Janice and Bruce Russell, with all my love and with a special thank-you to my dad for helping me with the Florida research; to my bro and my sis; to Alan and Fran Romanchuck; and in loving memory of Alex Romanchuck. The Bigtrees’ story owes a huge debt to many authors but especially to Katherine Dunne, George Saunders, and Kelly Link. And a final thank-you to the readers of this book.

Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in The New Yorker ’s debut fiction issue and on The New Yorker ’s 20 Under 40 list, and was chosen as one of Granta ’s Best Young American Novelists. In 2009, she received the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation for excellence in fiction writing for writers under thirty-five years of age. Her short story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves , was published by Knopf in 2006 and released in paperback in 2007 by Vintage. It was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times , and Chicago Tribune . Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Oxford American, Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story , and Conjunctions . Three of her short stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories volumes (2007, edited by Stephen King; 2008, edited by Salman Rushdie; and 2010, edited by Richard Russo). She has taught creative writing at Columbia University and Williams College and is currently writer-in-residence at Bard College.