Daphne Palasi Andreades was born and raised in Queens, New York. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded a Henfield Prize and a Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. Her debut novel, Brown Girls, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and was a finalist for several awards: the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the New American Voices Award, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Daphne lives in New York City, and is at work on her second novel.