Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on Long Island. He was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He met or invented the character Peter Leroy while dozing over a German lesson during his first year at Harvard. The following year, he married his muse, Madeline Canning; they have two sons. After earning a Master’s Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Kraft taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. Since then, he has spent a part of every day writing the voluminous work of fiction that he calls The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It has received widespread critical acclaim in the United States and internationally. Three of the volumes were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Kraft has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.