Mary Karr’s first memoir, The Liars’ Club, won prizes for best first nonfiction from PEN (The Martha Albrand Award) and the Texas Institute for Letters. It was a New York Times bestseller for more than a year. Her second memoir, Cherry, was also a New York Times bestseller. She won a Guggenheim fellowship for her poetry, as well as Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and essays. Other grants include the Whiting Award and the Bunting Fellowship from Radcliffe College. Her poetry appears frequently in The New Yorker. She is the Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University.