Jericho Brown, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, worked as the speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. His first book, Please, won the American Book Award. The New Testament was winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, 2015. He teaches at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.