George Saunders is the author of Lincoln in the Bardo, Tenth of December, In Persuasion Nation, The Short and Frightening Reign of Phil, Pastoralia, CivilWarLand in Terrible Decline, The Braindead Megaphone, and The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, which won the Man Booker Prize. His writing has appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, Harper's, and GQ. He received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 2006. He was named one of the Best Writers Under 40 by The New Yorker in 2000. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2013. He is an instructor at Syracuse University.