18 pp. A separately bound book from McSweeney's 7. 'Autumn passed in its slow, sheltering way, and toward the end of November, Joshua's teacher asked the class to write a short essay describing a community of local animals. ''There were many birds here before, but now there gone. Nobody knows where they went. I used to see them in the trees. I fed one at the zoo when I was little. It was big. The birds went away when no one was looking. The trees are quiet now. They do not move.'' ' 'Kevin Brockmeier lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. His stories have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Chicago Tribune (as a Nelson Algren Award recipient), the 2000 O. Henry anthology, and elsewhere. He is the author of two forthcoming books, the story collection Things Fall from the Sky and the children's novel City of Names, both of which will be published in spring 2002.'