"Dumb Religious Story #137" is Marcus Lessard’s first publication. Another of his stories was recently selected as a semifinalist in Gival Press’s short story competition. Marcus makes his living in Boulder, Colorado, cleaning downtown office buildings; and he writes in his free time. Formerly Marcus had studied chemical engineering at the University of Connecticut. Prior to living in Boulder he had lived for two years in Western Colorado. It was the diverse mountain landscape of the Western Slope region with its mesas, canyons, gorges, volcanic remnants, and the colorful and eclectic layering of sediment as seen in so many of the rock formations, that, for him, first birthed the idea for this story.