Zachary Lazar is the author of four previous books, including the novel Sway, the memoir Evening's Empire: The Story of My Father's Murder, and the novel I Pity the Poor Immigrant, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, and the 2015 John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for "a writer in mid-career whose work has demonstrated consistent excellence." Lazar's journalism has appeared in The New York Times, NPR's All Things Considered, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He lives in New Orleans, where he is on the creative writing faculty at Tulane University.