Judith Freeman is a novelist, essayist, critic and short story writer, author of four novels and a collection of short stories. Her novels include The Chinchilla Farm, Set for Life (winner of the Western Heritage Award in 1991), A Desert of Pure Feeling, and most recently, Red Water, named one of the 100 best books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times. In 1997 Judith received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction. Her essays, reviews, and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She teaches in The Masters of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California and has been a writer-in-residence at various workshops around the country. She lives in Los Angeles and Idaho.