Content Warning: This section discusses disordered eating.

Dubus was an American short story and essay writer who was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1936. Dubus was from a family of Cajun and Irish Catholic heritage and grew up in Lafayette. He graduated from McNeese State College in 1958 with a degree in journalism and English. After spending six years in the marines, he married and had four children. He then moved with his family to Iowa to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and earn a master’s degree in creative writing. The Dubus family afterward moved to Haverhill, Massachusetts, so Dubus could become a professor at Bradford College. He ended up getting divorced and remarrying twice, having a total of six children. He died in 1999 in Massachusetts.

Dubus had depression as well as other medical problems, especially after a car accident in 1986 necessitated that his leg be amputated and he transition to using a wheelchair. Dubus wrote one novel, but he primarily focused on short stories and essays, which he published in literary magazines and in collections of his own work. His books include The Lieutenant (1967), Separate Flights (1975), Adultery and Other Choices (1977), Finding a Girl in America (1980), The Times Are Never So Bad (1983), Voices from the Moon (1984), The Last Worthless Evening (1986), Selected Stories (1988), Broken Vessels (1991), Dancing After Hours (1996), and Meditations from a Movable Chair (1998).