Because I'm aware that a fair number of folks who are likely to see this post are not, on the other hand, likely to read this in my upcoming collection, here I offer the text of the (brief) acknowledgements page of Telling the Map.
The stories in this book were all developed and improved by their original editors, to whom I owe a great debt. They are Ellen Datlow, Gavin J. Grant, Susan Marie Groppi, Kelly Link, David Moles, Jonathan Strahan, Gordon Van Gelder, and Sheila Williams. Gavin and Kelly also edited this collection as a whole, and published it, for which I offer thanks.
As a writer, and as a person, I have benefited enormously from my association with several workshops. I first learned to take myself seriously as an artist and to think carefully about the crafting of stories at the Clarion West Workshop in Seattle in 1996. I completed my formal training as a writer under the tutelage of Derek Nikitas at the Bluegrass Writers Studio of Eastern Kentucky University. Most of all, though, I here acknowledge the sincere thanks I owe to those many colleagues who read and critiqued most of these stories at the annual Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop, now guided by my best unbeaten brother, Richard Butner.
Finally, all who read these stories should know that almost none of them would have been even begun, much less been finished and published, if it weren’t for the essential, indispensable contributions to my art and to my life made by my wife, Gwenda Bond. Whatever I have accomplished as a storyteller in the 21st century, I could not, would not, have done without her.