Lauren Elkin (New York) is a writer, English teacher and co-director of the Center for New and International Writing at the University of Liverpool. He also edits *The White Review* magazine. Her essays have been published in *The New York Times Book Review* or *The Times Literary Supplement* among others. She has lived in London, Venice, Tokyo and Hong Kong. With his first novel *The Floating Cities*, which was first published in French, he won the readers' prize at the literary festival Rue des Livres. Together with Charlotte Mandell, she has translated the biography of Jean Cocteau written by Claude Arnaud,