Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. His writings have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review Online, The Progressive, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. A bestseller in both the United States and France, his debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, received the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, the Great Lakes Great Reads Award, and France's Prix PAGE/America. Butler graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison before attending the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently lives in Wisconsin with his wife and their two children.