Joan Brady was born in California and danced with New York City Ballet when she was in her twenties. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia University, Brady now lives in England where she is an author of short stories; articles; reviews; a highly acclaimed autobiography, The Unmaking of a Dancer, and a novel, Theory of War, for which she became the first woman (and first American) to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1993. She is also the author of the best-selling novel, The Émigré, and Death Comes for Peter Pan, a fictionalized account of an American medical scandal, both published in the U.K. In 2001, she represented England at the Centenary of the Nobel Peace Prize.