Butler was born in Granite City, Illinois, in 1945 and studied theater at Northwestern University and playwriting at the University of Iowa. He served in Vietnam as a counterintelligence agent and translator, and he is known for his contributions to the literature of the Vietnam war and its aftermath. He is also well known for his love of experimentation and for such short story collections as A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992), Tabloid Dreams (1996), Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards (2004), and Severance (2006). Each of these collections takes on a different formal challenge—writing in the voices of Vietnamese immigrants to the United States, crafting stories inspired by vintage postcards, and offering 240-word stories in the voices of severed heads.

The collection Tabloid Dreams, which includes “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot,” takes its inspiration from the headlines of now-defunct grocery-store checkout tabloids that were less about celebrity gossip than about outlandish fictitious phenomena. For example, Weekly World News (1979-2007) included such headlines as “Bigfoot Stole My Wife!,” “Chimp’s Head Put on Human Body,” and “Duck Hunters Shoot Angel!” Each story in the collection takes one ridiculous headline and humanizes the premise through a first-person narrator—Butler is known for the wildly different characters whom he brings to life through portrayals of human experiences that transcend era or culture.