Underground Airlines (Winters)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1975-76
• Where—Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., USA
• Education—Washington University, St. Louis
• Awards—Philip K. Dick Award; Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Ben Winters, an American author, journalist, teacher and playwright, was born in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. In high school, Winters played in the punk band Corm alongside John Davis, now of Title Tracks. In 1998, he graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was active in the comedy group Mama's Pot Roast. He is married and now lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife and three children.

Career
Winters was first known as the author of the 2009 New York Times bestseller Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. In June 2010, Android Karenina was released. Next came his two-book series for young adults, The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman in 2010 followed by The Mystery of the Missing Everything in 2011. He also published Bedbugs in 2011, a horror novel for adults.

In 2012, Winters published The Last Policeman, the first in a trilogy of detective novels set in a pre-apocalyptic United States; that book won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in the category Best Paperback Original. The second novel in the trilogy, Countdown City, came out in July 2013 and won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award for Distinguished Science Fiction. The third and final book, World of Trouble, was released in 2014.

Winters' 2016 novel, Underground Airlines, is set in a present-day alternate universe in which the American Civil War never happened and four states continue to practice human slavery—legally. The book's protagonist, a U.S. government bounty hunter, and former slave, attempts to infiltrate an abolitionist group known as the "Underground Airlines."

Winters is also a playwright. His work includes the Off-Broadway musical Slut (2005), as well as four children's musicals The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (2006), A (Tooth) Fairy Tale (2009), Uncle Pirate (2010), and the Neil Sedaka juke-box musical, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (2005).  (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/19/2016. Retrieved 2/19/2016.)