BIOGRAPHY

Born in Honduras, J. Saunders Elmore grew up in Texas and Ohio, but has since lived in Louisiana, North Carolina, Oregon, New York, and France, and has spent an unhealthy share of his off-time driving and thumbing to points beyond and between. He has slummed extensively in the United States, Europe, Central America, and Southeast Asia, and in the meantime has worked a grim series of unsettling jobs to support the writing habit. In 2004 he won a New York Times Fellowship from New York University's Creative Writing Program, and in 2006 he received an MFA in fiction.

His debut novel, The Amateur American (Crown/Random House) hit shelves on August 4th, 2009, and is currently being adapted to film by Likely Story. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, Ellen.