Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a memoirist, fiction writer and playwright. He is the author of the forthcoming story collection American Estrangement. His memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by Dwight Garner of The New York Times, and his debut story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, and New American Stories, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction and a Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers’ fiction fellowship. Saïd lives in New York City with his wife, the artist Karen Mainenti, and serves on the board of directors for the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and teaches creative writing at Columbia University, Hunter College and NYU, where he received an Outstanding Teaching Award.