John Florio was raised in Flushing, NY. He credits the streets of Queens as one of his earliest influences, along with black-and-white movies, old superhero comics, Sports Illustrated, Humphrey Bogart, and the Hardy Boys. A fan of pop fiction and creative nonfiction, Florio is the author of the historical crime novels, Sugar Pop Moon and Blind Moon Alley. With Ouisie Shapiro, he has written the nonfiction books: Doomed, War in the Ring, One Nation Under Baseball, and One Punch from the Promised Land. Florio and Shapiro also contribute to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, and ESPN. Florio holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine, an MA from New York University, an MBA from St. John’s University, and he is pursing a DFA at the University of Glasgow. He currently serves on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA creative writing program at the University of Southern Maine. Visit John Florio at johnfloriowriter.com.