David Allan Cates is the author of five novels, and a chapbook of poetry, the Mysterious Location of Kyrgyzstan. His novels include Hunger in America, a New York Times Notable Book; X Out of Wonderland and Freeman Walker, both Montana Book Award Honor Books; and Ben Armstrong’s Strange Trip Home and Tom Connor’s Gift, both of which won Gold Medals for Best Fiction in the Independent Book Publishers Book awards. He is the winner of the 2010 Montana Arts Council’s Innovative Artist Award. His stories and poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, and his travel articles in Outside Magazine and the New York Times Sophisticated Traveler. Until February of 2017, Cates was the executive director of Missoula Medical Aid and led 40 teams of medical professionals to provide public health and surgery services in Honduras. He is a part-time faculty member at Pacific Lutheran University.