Stevan Allred has survived circumcision, a religious upbringing, the sixties, the War on Poverty, the break-up of The Beatles, pneumonia (twice), years of psychotherapy, the Reagan Revolution, the War on Drugs, the Roaring Nineties, plantar fasciitis, an embarrassingly bad goatee, the Lewinsky Affair, the internet bubble, the Florida recount of 2000, the Bush Oughts, the War on Terror, teenage children, a divorce, hay fever, the real estate bubble, male pattern baldness, the great Ebola scare of 2014, and heartburn. His collection of linked short stories, A Simplified Map of the Real World, was published in 2013 by Forest Avenue Press.