Author John Hawkes was born in Stamford, Connecticut on August 17, 1925. During World War II, he joined the American Field Service and was an ambulance driver in Italy and Germany from the summer of 1944 to the summer of 1945. He taught at Brown University for thirty years. He wrote eighteen novels, four plays, and a volume of poetry during his lifetime. His first novel, The Cannibal, was published in 1949. His other works include The Lime Twig, The Beetle Leg, and Virginie: Her Two Lives. His novel Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade won France's Prix Medicis �tranger in 1986. He died on May 15, 1998.