David Winner was born in Charlottesville, Virginia and educated at Oberlin and the University of Arizona (Master's of Fine Arts). As a child, Winner was taken to Europe several times, though mostly to Italy where members of his family (passionate Italophiles though not actual Italians) have often lived. Almost by accident in the summer after his final year at college, he found himself traveling for the first time to Mexico. Speaking only minimal Spanish and having only minimal knowledge of Mexican culture, he took long bus rides through steep mountain roads, met some huge insects and howling monkeys. On the way back, he and his American traveling companions glimpsed magical names on the flight board: Buenos Aires, Lima, Bogota. A few years later, he saved a thousand dollars and spent it traveling for six months in South America: from Ecuador down through Chile and across to Brazil, passing through Paraguay in the wake of a military coup, Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia. Speaking Spanish a tad better, he had adventures and misadventures (versions of which appear in his writing) and developed a love of Latin America that has persisted to this day. Now, he teaches at a community college, lives in Brooklyn and writes fiction. The Cannibal of Guadalajara came not only from his love of Latin America but his interest in unconventional family arrangements, for which he likes to use fiction (rather than his own relatively ordinary marriage) to explore. David Winner has received two Pushcart nominations and first prize in The Ledge's 2003 Fiction Contest. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, Fiction, Confrontation, Cortland Review, Staple, Dream Catcher, Phantasmagori, KGB, and several other literary magazines in the USA and the UK. A film based on a short story of his was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, and he's the fiction editor of The American, a magazine based in Rome, Italy.