As fiction editor of Esquire from 1969 to 1977, then as an editor at Knopf and of The Quarterly until 1995, Gordon Lish worked closely with many of the most daring writers of the past fifty years, including Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, Harold Brodkey, Barry Hannah, Joy Williams, Anne Carson, Amy Hempel, Denis Donoghue, Dawn Raffel, Jason Schwartz, Gary Lutz, Noy Holland, Christine Schutt, Sam Lipsyte and Ben Marcus.More than a dozen books have appeared under Lish's name - -including the novels Dear Mr Capote (1983), Peru (1986) and Zimzum (1993). These have won Lish a passionate cult following as a writer of recursive and often very funny prose.