Johan­na Kaplan is the author of Oth­er People’s Lives, a col­lec­tion of sto­ries, and O My Amer­i­ca!, a nov­el. Her books were final­ists for the Nation­al Book Award, the Amer­i­can Book Award, and the Hem­ing­way Foundation/​PEN Award, and she has twice received the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award for fic­tion, as well as the Edward Lewis Wal­lant Award and the Ken­neth B. Smilen/​Present Tense Lit­er­ary Award. Her sto­ries, essays, and reviews have appeared in Com­men­tary, Harper’s Mag­a­zine, Moment, the New York Times Book Review, and City Jour­nal, and her sto­ries have been wide­ly anthol­o­gized. Her essay ​“Tales of My Great-Grand­fa­thers” appears in the Schock­en anthol­o­gy Who We Are: On Being (and Not Being) a Jew­ish Amer­i­can Writer. A native New York­er, she lives in Man­hat­tan and for many years worked as a teacher of emo­tion­al­ly dis­turbed chil­dren at Mount Sinai Hos­pi­tal. She is cur­rent­ly at work on a nov­el with the ten­ta­tive title For­bid­den.