Christopher Howard grew up in Illinois and spent a few months of an aborted Peace Corps sojourn in Mongolia in the late 1990s. His short story, "How to Make Millions in the Oil Market," published in McSweeney's, was nominated for the 2008 National Magazine Award in Fiction. Along with Jodi Picoult, he was one of two authors selected to provide a short story for the launch of Amazon Singles in January 2011.