Theodore C. Van Alst Jr is the author of Chicago-set award-winning story collections Sacred Smokes and Sacred City as well as the editor of The Faster Redder Road: The Best UnAmerican Stories of Stephen Graham Jones. His co-edited (with Shane Hawk) Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology was published in September 2023 by Vintage / Penguin Random House and has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, Locus, and Shirley Jackson Awards. His Southern Gothic novella Pour One for the Devil was released by Lanternfish Press in March 2024 and his third collection of linked stories, Sacred Folks, was published Fall 2024 by the University of New Mexico Press. His debut novel, The El, will be published by Vintage / Penguin Random House in 2025. His work has appeared in Southwest Review, The Rumpus, Chicago Review, The Journal of Working-Class Studies, Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, Apex Magazine, Red Earth Review, Indian Country Today, and elsewhere.