Born and raised in New Orleans, John Gregory Brown is the author of the novels Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery; The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur; Audubon’s Watch; and A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. His honors include a Lyndhurst Prize, the Lillian Smith Award, the John Steinbeck Award, a Howard Foundation fellowship, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award. After two decades as the Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English at Sweet Briar College, he now teaches at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. He and his wife, the novelist Carrie Brown, have three children.