Edward Hoagland has written more than twenty books, including the travel memoirs African Calliope and Notes from the Century Before, the essay collections Walking the Dead Diamond River and The Tugman s Passage, and the novels Cat Man and Seven Rivers West. He worked in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey Circus while attending Harvard, and later traveled the world writing for a number of national magazines including Harper s and Esquire. He has received numerous prestigious literary awards, and taught at many American colleges and universities. He is a native New Yorker, who now divides his time between Martha s Vineyard and his farmhouse in the mountains in Burton, Vermont.