John J. McLaughlin is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the University of Virginia. His novel, Run in the Family, won the Texas Institute of Letters awards for Best Novel and Best First Fiction, and the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel. His nonfiction has appeared in The Washington Post, National Catholic Reporter, America, and Barely South Review, among others. He is the co-founder and director of Education Across Borders, an international nonprofit serving the marginalized in the Dominican Republic, and lives now with his family in Seattle.