Richard Ford is the author of three collections of stories and six novels, most recently The Lay of the Land, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as a New York Times Best Book of the Year. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Independence Day and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Ford has taught at Williams, Princeton, Harvard, Northwestern, and Bowdoin College. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Esquire, Granta, Le Monde, and The New Yorker among other magazines and journals. He lives in East Boothbay, Maine.