Victor Lavalle

Victor D. LaValle, born February 3, 1972, was raised in Flushing and Rosedale, Queens. He graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English and received his M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University. He has been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award and Big Machine is the winner of an American Book Award.  He serves as Director of the Fiction Concentration at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

He is married to Emily Raboteau who is the author of the novel, The Professor’s Daughter, (Henry Holt, 2005) and the memoir, Searching for Zion (Grove Press, 2013).