Percival Everett is the author of more than twenty-five books, among them the novels Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Glyph and Erasure. His last volume of poems, Swimming Swimmers Swimming was also published by Red Hen Press. He is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

In Trout's Lie, Percival Everett explores the semantic relationship between sense and so-called nonsense¿and questions whether either is actually possible.