Maile Meloy was born in Helena, Montana on January 1, 1972. She received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of California, Irvine. Her works include Liars and Saints, A Family Daughter, and The Apothecary. She has won numerous awards including The Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for her story, Aqua Boulevard, in 2001; the PEN/Malamud Award for Half in Love in 2003; and the California Book Awards Silver Medal for Fiction for Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. She has also received the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004. In 2007, she was chosen as one of… Granta's 21 Best Young American Novelists.