on Preparation for the Life to Come in 2008, and spent five years writing the book in longhand. Of his relationship with his influential father, Lish has said: "When I was writing this book, I was completely isolated from family, from any of the significance my name might have had...It was me and my wife, living together, isolated from almost everybody." According to the Times, the death in 1994 of Gordon's wife, the mother of Atticus, led to a twelve-year estrangement between the two men. Lish maintains that the two have since reconciled, but that he would "absolutely not" have considered asking his well-respected father for help, either in writing or in marketing his work. However, after his manuscript was accepted by Tyrant's founder Giancarlo DiTrapano, Gordon Lish helped persuade his own literary agent, Amanda "Binky" Urban, to take his son on as a client. Urban has helped to sell British and French rights to Preparation for the Next Life, and is negotiating the sale of film rights. A fluent Mandarin speaker, Lish was working as a technical translator at the time of his novel's publication. In November 2014, he told the Times he'd begun work on another novel. The Wall Street Journal reports the novel is set in Boston. Lish claims not to read much recent fiction. In an interview with The New York Times, he cites movies, television, and music as sources of inspiration. "In training to write, I was drawn to Hemingway, Dos Passos, Flaubert, Tolstoy and the Bible. Maybe there's a throwback thing that people are getting into. It's like hemlines probably. They were short for a while, and now people are ready for them to be long again." Mixed martial arts career Lish spent six years training to become a professional mixed-martial-arts fighter, and continues to practice grappling, including Brazilian jiujitsu, in New York City gyms. According to a 'Talk of the Town' piece in The New Yorker, Lish owns a 1-1-0 record in professional M.M.A. bouts. List of works Life is With People (New York: Tyrant Books) A difficult-to-classify work Lish describes as "a bildungsroman" and "a cautionary tale whose point is clear" (Tyrant website), with illustrations by the author. Preparation for the Next Life (New York: Tyrant Books, 2014) The War for Gloria (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) Awards and honors 2015 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, Preparation for the Next Life 2015