Big-Headed Anna Listens to the Last Sound in the Grass, second edition, was in search of a cover. Since many of the collection’s odd little stories take place in Louisiana, we started in the cliché-strewn territory of cypress swamps and hanging moss. The long title snaking through the vegetation seemed lost. We experimented with artwork, one a girl in a black swing against a fire red sky came close and would be a captivating cover for a book but not this one.

The photograph that appears on the cover is that of Jane, my aunt, her demeanor having always haunted me. The solemnity of a Depression-era child, the starkness of her surroundings. Perhaps too stark, too explicit, and so I emailed our designer Russel Davis at BRAVO Book Design, digital photographs of the Hudson River and Mid-Hudson Bridge in fog and sunrise and suggested we fill the cover with one. Russ decided to “play around” and merged the child Jane and the Hudson River at dawn in 2026, the images separated by a century. Under the 21^st century sun Jane seems metamorphosed and alive.