Born in 1974, in Spain, Jeanine Cummins attended Towson University, in Maryland, where she majored in English and Communications. After a short experience in Belfast, Northern Ireland, she moved back to the United Sates and began working in the publishing industry. She is the author of the bestselling memoir A Rip in Heaven (2004), and the novels The Outside Boy (2010) and The Crooked Branch (2013). Her fourth book, American Dirt (2020), was an Oprah’s Book Club and a Barnes & Noble Book Club selection, will soon be published in 37 languages and has sold more than three and a half million copies worldwide.