Francisco X. Stork is the author of five novels: The Way of the Jaguar (Bilingual Review Press- 2000); Behind the Eyes (Dutton: June 2006.); Marcelo in the Real World (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic 2009; The Last Summer of the Death Warriors (AAL/Scholastic 2010); Irises (AAL/Scholastic 2012).The Way of the Jaguar was the recipient of the Chicano/Latino Literary Award. Marcelo in the Real World was the recipient of the Schneider Book Award and has been translated into seventeen languages. The Last Summer of the Death Warriors was the recipient of the Elizabeth Walden Award and the International Latino Book award. He was born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1953. He came to El Paso, Texas with his adoptive father when he was nine. He attended Spring Hill College (a Jesuit College in Mobile Alabama). He received a Danforth Fellowship to Harvard University where he studied Latin American Literature with, among others, Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and Nobel laureate. After four years of graduate school, dissatisfied with the scholarly writing required of a future college professor, he left to attend Columbia Law School hoping to make a living and support his family by practicing law while writing fiction. Fifteen years and a dozen legal jobs later he published his first novel. He currently works as a lawyer for a state agency in charge of developing affordable housing. Writing novels for young adults is his vocation.