Marina Budhos is an author of award-winning fiction and nonfiction. She has published two novels: The Professor of Light (1999) and House of Waiting (1995). Her short stories, articles, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Ms., Travel & Leisure, Time Out, and Los Angeles Times. She has received a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers, a New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowship, and has been a Fulbright Scholar to India. Her first young adult novel, Ask Me No Questions (2006), was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Notable Book and received the first James Cook Teen Book Award. She is currently a professor of English at William Paterson University and lives in New Jersey with her husband and two sons.