Michael Mewshaw's more-than-four-decade career spans fiction, nonfiction, literary criticism, sports reporting, travel writing and investigative journalism. He is the author of twenty books, including two previous titles about the professional tennis tour: Short Circuit and the best-selling Ladies of the Court.

Among recent notable nonfiction works are Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal (2014), and Between Terror and Tourism: An Overland Journey Across North Africa (2010). Mewshaw's memoirs include If You Could See Me Now. Among his prominent novels are Year of the Gun, Shelter from the Storm, Island Tempest and, most recently the prize-winning, Lying with the Dead.

He has published hundreds of articles, reviews, and literary profiles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Newsweek, Harper's Magazine, Granta, and many other international outlets. During the winter he lives in Key West, Florida, with his wife, Linda; he spends the rest of the year traveling in Europe and Africa.