Ken Wells, novelist and journalist, grew up in a beer-drinking family deep in South Louisiana's Cajun bayou country. His father was a part-time alligator hunter and snake collector and his mother a gumbo chef extraordinaire. Second of six sons, Wells began his journalism career covering car wrecks and gator sightings for the weekly Houma, La., Courier newspaper. He has gone on to an illustrious career: a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the Miami Herald; editor of two Pulitzer-Prize-winning projects for Page One of The Wall Street Journal where, over a 24-year period, he also roamed the globe covering the first Persian Gulf War, South Africa's transition to a multiracial democracy and many other stories. He has since worked as senior editor for Conde Nast Portfolio magazine and is now an editor-at-large for Bloomberg News, writing and editing longform narrative journalism for Bloomberg's projects and investigations team. Wells is the author of four well-received novels of the Cajun bayous: Meely LaBauve (a 2000 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book); Junior's Leg (2001); Logan's Storm (2002); and Crawfish Mountain (2007). He has also penned two non-fiction books: Travels with Barley: a Quest for the Perfect Beer Joint (2004), a travelogue through America's $75 billion beer industry; and The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous, a story of blue-collar heroism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Pirates, published in September 2008 by Yale University Press, was nominated for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize and won the Harry Chapin book award in September 2009.His fifth novel, Rascal, a Dog and His Boy, will be published by Knopf-Random House Young Adult in September 2010. He is currently working on a memoir. Wells lives in New York City, where he continues on his quest to find the Perfect Beer Joint and dabbles in his hobbies that include photography and song-writing. He often wishes he were fishing.