James Phelan is Distinguished University Professor of English at Ohio State University. He has written numerous essays and several books on narrative and narrative theory, most recently Reading the American Novel, 1920-2010 (2013) and, with David Herman, Peter J. Rabinowitz, Robyn Warhol, and Brian Richardson, Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates (2012). Since 1992, Phelan has been the editor of Narrative, the journal of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, and, since 1993, co-editor of the Ohio State University Press series on the Theory and Interpretation of Narrative.