Derek Palacio holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University. His short story “Sugarcane” appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013, and his novella How to Shake the Other Man was published by Nouvella Books in 2013. His debut novel, The Mortifications, is forthcoming from Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group. He is the co-director, with Claire Vaye Watkins, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. He lives and teaches in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is a faculty member of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program.Preparations for the Body
When the maid summoned her to the phone, Pilar Reyes was unaware that her husband, Senator Benito Reyes of Havana, had shot himself at the end of his weekly radio broadcast. Having talked beyond his twenty-seven-minute slot, the station went to commercial, and instead of the gunshot listeners heard a jingle for...
