Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of "Barolo" (The University of Nebraska Press), a food memoir based on his illegal work in the Italian wine industry, and "Pot Farm" (The University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books), a behind-the-scenes memoir about his work on a Northern California medical marijuana farm. His new nonfiction book, "Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and the Man Who First Photographed It" is forthcoming from W.W. Norton: Liveright. He is also the author of "Warranty in Zulu" (Barrow Street Press), "Sagittarius Agitprop" (Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books), "The Morrow Plots" (Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books), and the chapbooks "Four Hours to Mpumalanga" (Pudding House Publications), and "Aardvark" (West Town Press). Recent and forthcoming work appears in The Best Travel Writing and The Best Food Writing anthologies, The New Republic, Gastronomica, Plate Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Iowa Review, The North American Review, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Epoch, Field, Pleiades, Rosebud, Crazyhorse, Seneca Review, Ninth Letter, The Literary Review, and others. His work has been featured in such publications as Wine Spectator, The Chicago Tribune, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. Matthew Gavin Frank was born and raised in Chicago. Bitten by the food, wine, and travel bug, he left home at age seventeen, embracing the vagabond lifestyle that often lent itself to work in the restaurant industry. He ran a tiny breakfast joint in Juneau, Alaska, worked the Barolo wine harvest in Italy's Piedmont, sautéed hog snapper hung-over in Key West, designed multiple degustation menus for Julia Roberts's private parties in Taos, New Mexico, served as a sommelier for Chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand in Chicago, and assisted Chef Charlie Trotter with his Green Kitchen cooking demonstration at the Slow Food Nation 2008 event in San Francisco. He returned to academia and received his MFA in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction from Arizona State University. He taught creative writing to undergraduates in Phoenix, Arizona, and nonfiction writing to soldiers and their families near Fort Drum in upstate New York on the Canadian border. Frank is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a James Beard Award nomination for food writing, an IACP Award nomination, an Artist's Grant to the Vermont Studio Center, the Sonoran Prize, and numerous grants from the Virginia G. Piper Center for the Creative Arts. Presently, he teaches creative writing at Northern Michigan University where he is the Nonfiction Editor of the literary magazine, Passages North.His current favorite dessert recipe is Revisionist Caprese Salad: Basil Ice Cream, Mozzarella Syrup, Oven-Dried Sweet Tomato, and Tomato Rock Candy.He can be reached at www.matthewgfrank.com