Nathan Englander was born in 1970. His first book,ย For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, a collection of short stories, was published in May 1999 and became an international bestseller. It earned him a PEN/Faulkner Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Nathan was selected as one of '20 Writers for the 21st Century' byย The New Yorker,was awarded the Bard Fiction Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His short fiction has appeared inย The Atlantic Monthly,ย The New Yorker, and numerous anthologies includingย The Best American Short Stories,ย The O. Henry Prize Anthology, and thePushcart Prize. His first novel,ย The Ministry of Special Cases, was published in 2007.