Alex Shakar’s latest novel, Luminarium (Soho Press, 2011) won the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.  It was also named a Washington Post Notable Book, a New York Times Editor's Choice, and a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and other periodicals.  His novel The Savage Girl was a New York Times Notable Book.  His story collection “City in Love” won the FC2 National Fiction Competition.  A Brooklyn native, he now lives in Chicago and is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.