Bob Shacochis is a journalist and storyteller whose short story collection Easy in the Islands received the National Book Award for First Work of Fiction and whose first novel, Swimming in the Volcano, was a National Book Award finalist. As a war correspondent, Shacochis wrote The Immaculate Invasion, about the 1994 military intervention in Haiti, named a New York Times Notable Book of 1999. A recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy, he teaches at Benningtons and Florida States graduate writing programs.