Jerome Charyn was born in the Bronx in 1937, and is the author of more than thirty books, including Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace And Magical Land and The Black Swan. He has lived in Barcelona, Houston, Austin and San Francisco and now divides his time between New York and Paris, where he teaches film theory at the American University and writes regularly for Cahiers du Cinema.