In The Surface of the Lit World, Shane Seely draws on a wide range of sources-from personal memory to biblical narrative-to explore the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, the ways in which we make meaning of our lives. Seely delves into the ways in which family and environment shape us.

Shane Seely is an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of The Snowbound House, winner of the 2008 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry, and the chapbook History Here Requires Balboa.