Nina Sie­gal grew up in New York City and Great Neck, Long Island, but these days she lives in Ams­ter­dam, the Nether­lands, where she works as an author and a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to the Inter­na­tion­al New York Times. She got her B.A. at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty and her M.F.A. in Fic­tion at the Iowa Writ­ers Work­shop. Although she has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about women in US pris­ons, hous­ing and home­less­ness, and all sorts of urban cul­tur­al issues, Sie­gal late­ly focus­es on the inter­sec­tion of art and soci­ety, which is also the theme of both her novels.