Chris Offutt

Chris Offutt lives on a hill outside Iowa City. His driveway looks like it will be impossible to shovel during the winter, but it is otherwise a nice home, calm, the kind of place you would imagine a writer would live. There’s a 10-foot cactus that a student gave him. It fills the entire living room window. There are turtle shells on a shelf, and a huge hornet nest hanging in his office. At his dining room table sat a notebook and a draft of his next project.