Afghan-American author Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father was the first Afghan to marry an American woman, his mother the first American woman to marry an Afghan and living with him in Afghanistan as an Afghan. Ansary came to America at the age of sixteen, finished high school in Colorado, and graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He wrote Games Without Rules, The Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan, nominated for a Northern California Book Award in 2012. His bestselling Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes won the Northern California Book Award for nonfiction in 2009 and has been translated into eight languages. His 2003 memoir West of Kabul, East of New York was selected as San Francisco's "One City One Book" pick for 2008. Ansary also wrote The Widow's Husband, a historical novel, numerous nonfiction children's books, and several textbooks. including a 12-book series, Holiday Histories, and the 8-book series Native Americans. Ansary ran the San Francisco Francisco Writer's Workshop for 22 years and has taught memoir writing workshops in Portland, San Francisco, and Puerto Vallerto, Mexico. His travels have taken him to 45 of the fifty states, Mexico, Europe, North Africa, Turkey, and Kazakhstan. In 2001, the day after 9/11, he wrote an email about the event to 20 of his friends, which became the first viral phenomenon of the Internet age: it was read by tens of millions around the globe within the week. Today he lives with his wife in San Francisco, California, where he hosts a Memoir Pool, a blog devoted to the art of the real-life story. His two daughters live in Brooklyn.
