A group of Americans in Venice encounter an Ezra-Pound-like sculptor.

Richard Stern is the Helen A. Regenstein Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. In 1985 he won the Medal of Merit for the Novel awarded every six years by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His recent works include Pacific Tremors, published by TriQuarterly Books in 2001, and What Is What Was (Chicago, 2001). Almonds to Zhoof, The Collected Stories of Richard Stern is forthcoming from TriQuarterly Books in Fall 2004.