Born to an American father and an Armenian-Lebanese mother, novelist Micheline Aharonian Marcom spent many childhood summers in Beirut. Her first book, Three Apples Fell From Heaven (2001) deals with the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman government and was named one of the best books of the year by both The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The Daydreaming Boy (2004), about a genocide survivor living in 1960s Beirut, won the 2005 PEN/USA Award for Fiction. Marcom received a Whiting Writer’s Award in 2006 and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Mills College and Goddard College.