For more than thirty years, Joan Burbick lived in the Palouse region of northern Idaho and eastern Washington writing and teaching at Washington State University with periodic stints as a visiting professor at universities in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Warsaw. At present, she resides on an island off the coast of Washington. Her two nonfiction books, Rodeo Queens and the American Dream and Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy were based on years of interviewing people about how the myths of the West shape everyday life. These interviews led her to many people whose lives were dramatically altered by violence. And their stories led her to Stripland, her first novel.