ELIZABETH BENEDICT is a novelist, journalist, editor, educator, and writing coach. She has published five acclaimed novels, including Almost, a national bestseller, and Slow Dancing, a National Book Award finalist. She also authored the classic book on writing about sex in fiction, The Joy of Writing Sex, which has been in print for 25 years. Benedict has written reviews and articles for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Real Simple, and Daedalus. She has also regularly contributed to Japanese Playboy, HuffPost, and Salmagundi. She conceived of and edited three prominent anthologies, including What My Mother Gave Me: 31 Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most, a New York Times bestseller; Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives; and Me, My Hair, and I: 27 Women Untangle an Obsession. Benedict is a member of the fiction faculty at the New York State Summer Writers Institute.