Ernest Brawley is a native Californian. His father was a prison guard, and he was raised on the grounds of several penitentiaries. He worked his way through college as a forklift driver at a tomato packing shed, a switchman on the Southern Pacific Railroad, and as a guard at San Quentin Prison, where he saw duty in the Gun Towers, the Big Yard and Death Row. He attended San Francisco State University, where he received a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. After college, he spent several years traveling the world. Since then, he has spent his life writing novels, teaching, and continuing to travel. He has taught at the University of Hawaii, Hunter College, New York University and the Pantheon-Sorbonne. He is a recipient of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature and served for several years on the Fiction Award Committee of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington. At present he resides on the island of Mauritius. Brawley has published four novels, THE RAP, SELENA, THE ALAMO TREE, and LOVE HAS NO COUNTRY. THE RAP and SELENA were recently republished. His latest novel, BLOOD MOON, will be coming out soon.