ABRAHAM VERGHESE is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, the New York Times Notable Book The Tennis Partner: A Doctor’s Story of Friendship and Loss, and the bestselling Cutting for Stone: A Novel. Verghese has received five honorary degrees and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives and practices medicine in Stanford, California, where he is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and vice chair of the Department of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His latest book is The Covenant of Water: A Novel (Grove Press).