Charles Baxter is the author of The Soul Thief, published in September, 2008 by Pantheon. His novel The Feast of Love (Pantheon/Vintage) was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2000 and has been made into a film by Robert Benton, starring Morgan Freeman. He has published three other novels, Saul and Patsy, First Light, and Shadow Play, and four books of stories. His New and Selected Stories will be published early in 2011.

Charles Baxter has also published essays on fiction collected in Burning Down the House (Graywolf) and Beyond Plot. He has received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Prix St. Valentine in France, and the Catalan Booksellers' Association Award for book of the year in Spain. He lived for many years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he taught at the University of Michigan. He now lives in Minneapolis and is currently the Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper's, among other journals and magazines. His fiction has been widely anthologized and translated into ten languages.