Writer Lynne Sharon Schwartz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received a B. A. from Barnard College, an M. A. from Bryn Mawr, and started work on a Ph.D. at New York University. She chronicled her love of reading and the meaning it has had upon her life in a book called Ruined by Reading. She has published around twenty books including Rough Strife, which was nominated for a National Book Award and Leaving Brooklyn, which was nominated for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has also written for children in such books as The Four Questions, explaining the traditions of Passover. She is also an Italian translator and her translations include A Place to Live and Other… Selected Essays by Natalia Ginzburg and Smoke over Birkenau by Liana Millu.