Leland de la Durantaye lives in Los Angeles, where he is a professor of comparative literature at the Claremont Colleges. His journalism and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The London Review of Books, Bookforum, Artforum, The Believer, Cabinet, and others. De la Durantaye is also a translator from French and Italian; his translation of the Jacques Jouet novel "Upstaged" was a finalist for the PEN Best Translated Book of the Year. "Hannah Versus The Tree" is his first novel.