Mark Harril Saunders was born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area. The son of a diplomat, he holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. Since childhood, he has traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, and China. Saunders has worked on Capitol Hill, at several bookstores, as a carpenter, and as a publisher’s sales representative. He is currently Assistant Director of the University of Virginia Press. His writing has appeared in the VQR, Blue Moon Review, Boston Review, and the Virginian-Pilot, and in 2001 he was awarded the Andrew Nelson Lytle Fiction Prize from Sewanee Review. A former fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Saunders lives in Charlottesville, Virginia and Castine, Maine with his wife and three children.