James Franco studied literature and creative writing at UCLA with Mona Simpson and Cal Bedient, and has MFAs from Columbia University and Brooklyn College, where he studied with Amy Hempel. His stories have also appeared in Esquire, and his collection Palo Alto was published by Scribner in 2011. He is now working on his PhD in literature at Yale, and recently wrote and directed a film about the poet Hart Crane called The Broken Tower.