Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of eight previous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Vandal Love, winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and Into the Sun, winner of the 2016 Midwest Book Award for Literary Fiction and selected by CBC/Radio-Canada as one of the most important books to be read by Canada's political leadership. His work has received the Nautilus Book Award for Investigative Journalism and has been featured in Best Canadian Essays. He has reported from India, Cuba, Colombia, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Afghanistan, and his writing has been published in dozens of newspapers and magazines, including Salon, the Los Angeles Times, the Paris Review, Pacific Standard, and Foreign Policy. He currently lives in Rio de Janeiro.