Ann Packer was born in Stanford, California, and educated at Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of two bestselling novels, Songs Without Words and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, for which she received a Great Lakes Book Award and the Kate Chopin Literary Award. She is also the author of the collections Mendocino and Other Stories, which includes work that appeared in Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards, and Swim Back to Me: Stories (Knopf, April 2011). Packer lives in Northern California.