Merrill Joan Gerber has published ten novels—among them King of The World, which won the Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award, and The Kingdom of Brooklyn, winner of the Ribalow Award from Hadassah Magazine. She teaches fiction writing at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Her new memoir, Beauty and the Breast: A Tale of Breast Cancer, Love and Friendship, will be published in October.