Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, the Boston Globe, the Forward, UTNE Reader, and the gently pedagogical pages of Education Update. He went to high school on Bainbridge Island, then attended the UW and the University of Chicago.