Brian Blair grew up on a small, family farm in the Missouri Ozarks, where he developed a deep appreciation for the people and landscape of his home state. For the past 20 years, he has lived and worked all over the United States. He has wrangled giraffe and rhinos in the Louisiana bayou, bear dogs in the mountains of Montana, and worked to preserve Hellbender habitat in Appalachian Ohio. Recently, he completed his MFA in fiction at the University of Missouri and is on the road again in a beat-up old RV with his wife, daughter, and Great Pyrenees, collecting stories for his first novel.