Paul Cody graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Magna Cum Laude, With Distinction in English, and Senior Honors in Creative Writing, and earned an M.F.A. from Cornell University, where he was twice co-winner of the Arthur Lynn Prize in Fiction. He as received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Saltonstall Foundation, and was awarded a Stegner Fellowship by Stanford University (declined). He has worked as a housepainter, child care worker, teacher, editor and journalist, was Associate Editor and Staff Writer at Cornell Magazine where he twice won CASE awards for articles; and is an assistant professor of writing at Ithaca College. His four published novels include The Stolen Child (Baskerville, 1995), Eyes Like Mine (Baskerville, 1996), So Far Gone (Picador USA, 1998) and Shooting the Heart (Viking, 2004). His work has appeared in various periodicals, including Harper's, Epoch, The Quarterly, Story, the Boston Globe Magazine, and Cornell Magazine, and he has appeared on Voice of America as a Critic's Choice. He has volunteered, teaching in the CLEP program at the maximum-security Auburn Correctional Facility, and lives with his wife, the poet Elizabeth Holmes, and two sons, Liam and Austin, in Ithaca, New York.