Timothy O'Grady was born in Chicago and has lived in Ireland, London, Spain, and Poland. He is the author of three novels and three nonfiction books, the most recent of which is Divine Magnetic Lands (Random House 2009), an account of a road trip around America after thirty years of living in Europe. His first novel, Motherland (Henry Holt 1990), won the David Higham Award for best first novel of the year and I Could Read the Sky (Harvill 1998), a collaboration with the photographer Steve Pyke, was filmed and toured as a stage show and won the Encore Award for best second novel. He has written for numerous magazines and newspapers and has taught in Poland, Singapore, and the United States. In 2009-10 he was a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas. His book about that city is to be published in late 2014.