Jaimy Gordon won the National Book Award for Lords of Misrule, her novel of horseracing, desperation, and luck set in West Virginia. Gordon graduated from Antioch College in 1966 and earned her doctorate in creative writing from Brown in 1975. In 1974 she published her first novel, the cult favorite Shamp of the City–Solo, followed by 1990’s She Drove Without Stopping and 1999’s Bogeywoman. She has also written several novellas and a long–form poem, The Bend, the Lip, the Kid. But it was her fourth novel, 2010’s Lords of Misrule, that earned her both critical and commercial success. The novel follows several characters over the course of a year as they struggle with a con artist scheming to win a horse race. Gordon began teaching at the MFA program of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo in 1981 and retired in 2015 after 34 years. Gordon was named 2019 Michigan Author Award Winner by the Michigan Library Association, receiving the honor as a result of her well-developed character driven novels and her efforts to develop Michigan’s emerging writers.