Kevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, The Guardian First Book Award, the Prix Littéraire du Monde Prix Étranger, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, among other prizes, and his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He was a James A. Michener Fellow in Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin from 2009-2012 and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. A US Army veteran of the Iraq war, he lives on Florida's First Coast with his family.