Poet, novelist, playwright, and multimedia artist Jessica Hagedorn was raised and lived in the Philippines until she moved to San Francisco in her teens. She is the author of five books, including the novel Dogeaters (1990), finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Hagedorn is also the editor of three Asian American literature anthologies: Manila Noir (2013), Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction (1993), and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World (An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction) (2004). She is the recipient of a Lucille Lortel Playwrights Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fiction Fellowship, and an NEA-TCG Playwriting Residency Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Sundance Theatre Lab and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Currently, Hagedorn is the Parsons Family University Professor of Creative Writing and director of the MFA Writing Program at Long Island University Brooklyn.