HEIDI PITLOR is a former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and has been the series editor for The Best American Short Stories since 2007. She is the author of The Birthdays and a forthcoming novel titled The Daylight Marriage.
Salman Rushdie was born in India on June 19, 1947. He was raised in Pakistan and educated in England. His novels include Grimus, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, and Luka and the Fire of Life. His non-fiction works include Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and Step across This Line. He has received numerous awards including the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel (twice), the James Tait Black Prize, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre �tranger, the Booker Prize in 1981for Midnight's Children, and the 2014 PEN/Pinter Prize.