Kent Wascom is the author of The New Inheritors, Secessia, and The Blood of Heaven. He was born in New Orleans and raised in Pensacola, Florida. The Blood of Heaven was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and NPR. It was a semifinalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan Award for First Fiction. Wascom was awarded the 2012 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for Fiction and selected as one of Gambit's 40 Under 40. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he directs the Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University.