As a rule, authors' first books are rarely their strongest. Think of Faulkner, Dickens, and Morrison. Think of Jane Austen and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Think of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who in his later years, sought out copies of his first book so that he could burn them. But the rules of art are as often excepted as adhered to, and such writers as Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, and Harriet Beecher Stowe serve as admonishments against aphoristic absolutism. So does Jose Skinner, with his first book of fiction, Flight and Other Stories.

Unlike most first-time fiction authors, whose short fiction debuts are the result of apprenticeships in Creative Writing programs, Skinner did not spend his youth earning a Master of Fine Arts. Instead, he built a wealth of experiences that would be the envy of any artist. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico of American expatriate parents, but raised in Mexico and New Mexico. His secondary education began in Mexico City, and he graduated with a degree in Horticulture from the University of California at Davis, after which he spent some time in Nicaragua helping the Sandinistas to rebuild after the overthrow of the dictator Somoza. In Nicaragua, Skinner worked as a journalist, but since then he has spent time in Spain, California, Texas, and New Mexico where he took such jobs as a court interpreter, a gardener, a liquor store clerk, and a literary translator.

The marketing behind Flight and other stories emphasizes Skinner's own background, and it is clear that the author's experiences in Latin America and the American Southwest serve as the wellspring for his fiction. In an "Author's Note" accompanying his packet from the University of Nevada Press, Skinner writes that he is "naturally interested in themes of displacement, exile, estrangement, and self-division." This is an accurate self-assessment, because the stories in his first book are all about people thrust into alien circumstances, then forced to make hard choices.

If Skinner has a storied past, then the manuscript for Flight has a storied pedigree as well. When the novelist Chris Offutt heard Skinner read the title story in a cafe, Offutt asked Skinner if he had any more stories. Skinner said yes, and Offutt encouraged him to enter the Drue Heinz contest at the University of Pittsburgh Press. Skinner's manuscript became a finalist in the contest, but it did not win. Nevertheless, it caught the attention of one of the judges for the contest, the novelist Douglas Unger, who forwarded Skinner's manuscript to the University of Nevada Press, where it was eventually published.