Phil LaMarche was a writing fellow in the Syracuse University graduate creative writing program. He was awarded the Ivan Klima Fellowship in fiction in Prague and a Summer Literary Seminars fellowship in St. Petersburg, Russia. His story "In the Tradition of My Family," published in the spring 2005 edition of Ninth Letter and the 2005 Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize Stories anthology, has been made into a film by orLater Productions. He lives in central New York state.