Rick Moody was born in New York City and studied at Brown University and Columbia University. He has attracted considerable attention and received lavish praise for four books: Garden State (1992) (winner of the Pushcart Press Editors' Book Award), The Ice Storm (1994) (Ang Lee directed a film version released in 1997), Purple America (1997), heralded as Book of the Year by both the New York Times and New York Post and, most recently, his highly acclaimed collection of short stories, Demonology.
In 2000, he received a Guggenheim fellowship. His short work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper's, Esquire, the Paris Review, The Atlantic and he is a regular contributor to the on-line magazine, McSweeneys. The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions, was published in August 2002. He lives on Fishers Island, New York.