Lewis Buzbee is a third generation California native. He began writing in 1972, at the upripe age of 15, after reading the first chapter of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and unfortunately, things haven't improved since then. He sold his first two short stories in 1979 and has been published, and unpublished, since then. He's worked as, in this order, a dishwasher, a bookseller, a publisher, a caterer, a bartender, and as a teacher of writing. Since 2000, he's been on the faculty of the MFA program at the University of San Francisco. He and his wife, the poet Julie Bruck, live with their daughter Maddy in San Francisco, just half a block from Golden Gate Park. His recent The Yellow Lighted Bookshop, a history of bookselling, was published by Graywolf Press.  His first novel for middle grade readers, Steinbeck's Ghost, will be published in September 2008 by Feiwel and Friends, who will also publish The Haunting of Charles Dickens in the fall of 2009.   He is currently at work on Mark Twain and the Mysterious Stranger.