Jervey Tervalon is the author of five books, including the bestselling Dead Above Ground and Understand This, for which he won the New Voices Award from the Quality Paperback Book Club. He edited the anthology The Cocaine Chronicles. He was a Remsen Bird writer in residence at Occidental College and a Disney screenwriting fellow. He is the director of the Literature for Life project, an online literary magazine and salon, and the literary director of LitFest Pasadena. Born in New Orleans, he now lives in California and teaches at the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
