Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne, 2002), and the novels Self Storage (Ballantine, 2008), Delta Girls (Ballantine, 2010), and The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins, 2004) which won Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Fiction of Social Engagement. Her first novel for young people, My Life with the Lincolns (Henry Holt, 2010), won a Silver Nautilus Book Award. Brandeis recently released The Book of Live Wires, sequel to The Book of Dead Birds, in ebook format.

Brandeis teaches in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at Antioch University and lives in Riverside, California, where she is mom to two adult kids and a toddler. She recently began a two-year appointment as the new Inlandia Literary Laureate.