Irving Place Editions

Paul Cody was born in Newton, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School and from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, magna cum laude, With Distinction in English, and Senior Honors in Creative Writing. He worked at the Perkins School for the Blind for three years, and earned an M.F.A. from Cornell University, where he was twice co-winner of the Arthur Lynn Prize in Fiction. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Saltonstall Foundation, and was awarded a Stegner Fellowship by Stanford University (declined). He has worked as a housepainter, teacher, editor and journalist, was associate editor and staff writer at Cornell Magazine, where he twice won CASE awards for articles; and has taught at Cornell, Ithaca College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and the Colgate Writing Seminars, and in Auburn Prison. His published novels include The Stolen Child (Baskerville, 1995), Eyes Like Mine (Baskerville, 1996), So Far Gone (Picador USA, 1998), Shooting the Heart (Viking, 2004), Love Is Both Wave and Particle (Roaring Brook, 2017), and Sphyxia (2020). His memoir, The Last Next Time was published in 2013 by Irving Place Editions. His work has appeared in various periodicals, including Harper's, Epoch, The Quarterly, Story, the Boston Globe Magazine, and Cornell Magazine, and he has appeared on Voice of America as a Critic's Choice. He lives with his wife in Ithaca, New York.

John Lauricella was born in Brooklyn and taken away as a child to suburban New Jersey, where he attended the public schools. He graduated from Colgate University A.B., Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude; later, he earned an M.F.A. in creative writing and a Ph.D. in English Language & Literature at Cornell University. He has served academic and administrative agendas at Cornell, especially in its Law School and its division of Alumni Affairs & Development. He has taught courses in essay-writing, as well as in English and American literatures, at Mercy College, Marymount College, Yeshiva University, Ithaca College, and Cornell. He has also worked as a country club caddie, a proofreader and copyeditor, and in the Manhattan Criminal Court; and has contributed writing to Cornell Law Forum and the AAP Newsletter of Cornell's College of Art, Architecture, and Planning. His fiction includes the novels Hunting Old Sammie (2013), 2094 (2014), and The Pornographer's Apprentice (2015), as well as short stories, some of which have appeared in Stone Canoe, The Piltdown Review, and Arts & Letters. His most recent novels are The China Plot -- based on events and impressions gathered by him during a visit to China -- and Unforgettable, an autobiographical coming-of-age novel. He continues to live in Ithaca with his wife Risa Mish, whose generosity, indulgence, and love make his work possible.