Mary Morris is the author of five novels, including House Arrest, as well as a trilogy of acclaimed travel memoirs, among them Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone. She was born in Chicago, but after attending Tufts College and Columbia, she never returned to the Midwest. Nonetheless, she has written often about the region and its tug, particularly in her first story collection, Vanishing Animals and Other Stories, awarded the Rome Prize in Literature. Morris lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter and teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.