Stoner & Spaz and its sequel, Now Playing: Stoner & Spaz II; Shakespeare Bats Cleanup; Strays; Deadville; Margaux with an X; The Brimstone Journals; The Arizona Kid; and Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses, a Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of the Year, are among Ron Koertge's many award-winning novels. Ron Koertge lives in South Pasadena, California, and is a two-time winner of the PEN USA Literary Prize for Children's Fiction.