MICHAEL ANTMAN is a veteran advertising creative director and marketing consultant, and a principal of the Chicago-based corporate positioning and branding firm McSweeney & Antman. He lived in Japan for three years, where he was a cross-cultural trainer and author of the popular weekly magazine column “Antoman’s Idiomu Scuramburu,” which used a serialized story in Japanese to illustrate the meaning of various baffling business idioms, such as “dog and pony show.” He also published haiku in literary magazines and anthologies, wrote textbooks and recorded English-instruction tapes that today can be found underneath couches and car seats all over Japan.

Cherry Whip is his first novel.