Mary Cappello's three previous works of literary nonfiction are Awkward, a Los Angeles Times bestseller; Called Back, a critical memoir on cancer that won a ForeWord Book of the Year Award and an Independent Publisher Book Award; and the memoir Night Bloom. A recipient of the Bechtel Prize for Educating the Imagination from Teachers and Writers Collaborative and the Lange-Taylor Prize from Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, she is a former Fulbright lecturer at the Gorky Literary Institute (Moscow) and currently a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Rhode Island. She lives in Providence.