Ron Leshem, born in 1976, is a native of Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv. His novel Beaufort won the Sapir Prize - Israel's top literary award - for 2006, as well as the Yitzhak Sadeh Prize for military literature. In 2002 he became deputy editor of Maariv newspaper and in 2006 joined the Channel Two television station as deputy director in charge of programming and special projects. Beaufort is his first novel.