Jeanne Marie Laskas is the New York Times bestselling author of six books including Hidden America and Concussion, which inspired the Golden Globe-nominated film. Formerly a contributing editor at Esquire, and a syndicated weekly columnist at The Washington Post Magazine, she has been writing for national magazines for 20 years, with work appearing in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Allure, Ladies Home Journal, and many others. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Best American Magazine Writing 2008 and Best American Sportswriting 2000, 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2012. She has won more than a dozen Gold Quill awards for Excellence in Journalism, and her piece about coal mining, "Underworld," was a finalist in feature writing for the 2007 National Magazine Awards. Her earliest essays and features are compiled in The Balloon Lady and Other People I Know. Laskas writes regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ, where she is a correspondent. She is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is director of The Writing Program, and founding director of The Center for Creativity. She lives on a horse farm with her husband and two daughters.
