Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain grew up in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, before his family relocated to Raleigh when he was a teenager. He attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he graduated in 1980 with a degree in English. Later, he pursued a law degree at Duke University, graduating in 1983. Fountain met his wife, Sharon Fountain, at Duke. Though he practiced real estate law for a brief period of time, Fountain was primarily fascinated by Haiti and its history of colonialism, racism, and ecological disasters. Despite the fact that he spoke little French and no Haitian Creole, he took his first trip to Haiti in 1991 and has since traveled there more than thirty times. These trips culminated in his first collection of short stories, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which was published in 2006 when Fountain was 48. His first novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, was published in 2012. The novel has received a number of awards and recognitions, including a Whiting Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Fountain currently lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife and two children.