John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic.
 
The Afterlife and Other Stories is a collection of 22 works of short fiction and a novella. The volume was published in 1994 by Alfred A. Knopf. The short story "The Sandstone Farmhouse" included in the collection won First Prize at the O. Henry Award competition in 1991