Andrea Barrett was born in 1954 and grew on and around Cape Cod. Her first novel, Lucid Stars, was published in 1988, followed by three others novels: Secret Harmonies, The Middle Kingdom, and Forms of Water. In 1996, Barrett published her acclaimed short story collection, Ship Fever, which won the National Book Award. Her next novel, Voyage of the Narwhal (1998), was a critically celebrated bestseller, with Thomas Mallon calling the book "a brilliant reversal of Heart of Darkness," and her second story collection, Servants of the Map (2002), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A MacArthur Fellow, she's also been a Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and has received Guggenheim and NEA fellowships. Her fiction and nonfiction have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays. Barrett currently lives in Williamstown, MA and teaches at Williams College. Her sixth novel, The Air We Breathe, will be released from W.W. Norton this October.