Born in Chicago, Peter Orner is the author of seven acclaimed books including Maggie Brown & Others, Love and Shame and Love,Esther Stories, finalist for the Pen/ Hemingway Award, and Am I Alone Here?, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter is his latest novel, just out from Little Brown. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Best American Stories, and been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. A former Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Orner is chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College. He lives with his family in Vermont, where he’s also a volunteer firefighter.