KENT WASCOM is the author of The New Inheritors, Secessia, y El Blood of Heaven, which was named a best book of the year by The Washington Post and NPR, was a semifinalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and was longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan Award for First Fiction. Wascom was also awarded the 2012 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for Fiction and selected as one of Gambit’s “40 Under 40.” Born in New Orleans and raised in Pensacola, Florida, today he lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he directs the Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University. El Gran Estado de Florida Occidental (Grove Press, Black Cat) is his latest book.