Don DeLillo was born and raised in New York City. He is the author of fifteen novels, including White Noise, Libra, Falling Man, and Point Omega, described by The New York Times as, “darkly comic novels about conspiracy, coincidence and obsession in late 20th century America.” Of his influences as a writer he said, “I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, and jazz and Abstract Expressionism.” His work has won many honors in this country and abroad—among them the National Book Award, the Jerusalem Prize and the PEN-Faulkner Award for Fiction. His novel Underworld won the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Falling Man, DeLillo’s haunting novel about September 11, begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and traces the aftermath of this global tremor in the altered lives of a few New Yorkers. About writing he said, “I write to find out how much I know. The act of writing for me is a concentrated form of thought.”