Dan Chaon grew up in rural Nebraska. Lonely and bored, he took refuge in his uncommonly active imagination. “It was one of those small elevator towns where there were like 15 people who lived there, and I was the only kid even close to my age,” Chaon says by phone from his current home in Cleveland.   

Dan Chaon's new novel, 'Await Your Reply,' is both an entertaining thrill ride and an incisive look at the way we live today, a world in which technology has fractured our existence and called into question the ever-mutating nature of identity. Chaon recently spoke with CityBeat about everything from his Alfred Hitchcock fixation to the questionable existence of Sarah Palin.