Patrick Michael Finn was born in Joliet, Illinois, and was raised there and in rural Southern California. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Riverside, and completed his M.F.A at the University of Arizona, where he was a Dean's Teaching Fellow. A winner of the AWP Intro Award and the 2004 Third Coast Fiction Prize, his work has appeared in Quarterly West, Ploughshares, Third Coast, The Richmond Review, Punk Planet, Triquarterly and Houghton Mifflin's Best American Mystery Stories. He lives in Arizona and teaches at Chandler-Gilbert Community College.