Charles Baxter is the author of nine books of fiction, most recently The Soul Thief, published this winter by Pantheon. He lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota.

• February 2008: The Chaos Machine
  What, past the conception stage, do fathers actually do? How should they behave?
• November 2003: Loss of Face
  The modern face: cosmetic, fake, inscrutable, and woefully underrepresented in contemporary fiction.