BARRY GIFFORD’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in thirty languages. His novel Night People, republished recently in our new edition Southern Nights was awarded the Premio Brancati, established by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alberto Moravia, in Italy, and he has been the recipient of the Maxwell Perkins Award and Syndicated Fiction Awards from PEN, as well as awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. He has also been awarded the Ingmar Bergman Chair on Cinema and Theater from the National University of Mexico. His books Sailor’s Holiday and The Phantom Father were each named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and his book Wyoming was named a Novel of the Year by the Los Angeles Times. He has written librettos for operas by the composers Toru Takemitsu, Ichiro Nodaira, and Olga Neuwirth. His film credits include Wild at Heart, based on his Sailor & Lula Stories — winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival — as well as Perdita Durango, Lost Highway, City of Ghosts, Ball Lightning, American Falls, and The Phantom Father. Barry Gifford’s most recent books include The Boy Who Ran Away to Sea, How Chet Baker Died: Poems, Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, The Up-Down, Imagining Paradise: New and Selected Poems, Writers, Southern Nights, Black Sun Rising / La Corazonada, and Roy’s World: Stories 1973–2020. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
