Jessica Hagedorn was born and raised in the Phillipines and moved to the United States in her teens. She studied theater arts in San Francisco, performing with fellow poets Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis, and other poets, dancers, and musicians in the Bay Area. In 1978 she moved to New York , where she currently lives. She is a well-known performance artist, poet, and playwright, and a former commentator on NPR. Her first novel, Dogeaters, was a finalist for the National Book Award, won an American Book Award, and was voted best book of the year in 1990 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It has been translated into several languages and was adapted by Hagedorn as a play, which recently premiered at the Joseph Papp/New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater. Her other books include the groundbreaking Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and a second novel, The Gangster of Love