Ethan Canin was born in 1960 in Ann Arbor. He studied English at Stanford and holds a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Iowa and an MD from Harvard Medical School. He has published a collection of stories, The Emperor of Air (1988), four novellas under the title The Palace Thief (1994) and four novels, including Carry Me Across the Water (2001) and America America (2008). Since 1998 he has taught at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.