Joe Bond grew up around group homes and residential treatment programs in eastern Kentucky. He’s been a child-care worker, a copy editor, a security guard at a psychiatric hospital and a research librarian at a law firm in Times Square. For several years he covered mixed martial arts fighting for ESPN and various magazines and newspapers throughout the U.S., Brazil and Japan. He began working on Hope House after his story "Damico" won the Masters Review Short Story Award. He lives in New Orleans.