Ethan Canin is highly regarded as both a novelist and a short story writer. He spent his childhood in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and California before attending Stanford University, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and then Harvard Medical School. He subsequently gave up a career in medicine to write and teach, and is now F. Wendell Miller Professor of English at his alma mater, the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Ethan Canin lives in California and Iowa, with his wife, their three children, and four chickens.