Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. A graduate of Tufts University and the MFA Program in Writing at UC Irvine, she is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Talusan is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. The Body Papers won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.