Phillip Gardner, an award-winning writer, has published four other short story collections, and his stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He grew up learning to love music and reading. For most of his life music has been his hobby and short fiction his love. While many of his stories are set in a fictional Darlington, South Carolina, and circulate around the Paradise Lounge, he resists the Grit-Lit-regional-writer label. His stories cross social classes, genders and genres, and range from the ridiculous and funny to the poignant and sublime. Gardner is professor emeritus at Francis Marion University where he taught for thirty years. He lives with his lovely wife Tressa in Darlington.
