Evan Balkan is the author of six books of nonfiction, including The Wrath of God: Lope de Aguirre, Revolutionary of the Americas (Univ. of New Mexico Press). His YA novel Spitfire is forthcoming from the Amphorae Publishing Group. He holds degrees in the humanities from Towson, George Mason, and Johns Hopkins universities and currently coordinates the English Department at the Community College of Baltimore County, where he also runs the creative writing program. A past recipient of a Maryland State Individual Artist Award for Fiction for his novel, Root That Mountain Down, most recently he was awarded a Saul Zaentz Innovation Fellowship and won the 2016 Baltimore Screenwriting Competition for his feature length screenplay, Spitfire, which is currently in pre-production. He lives in Towson, Maryland, where he spends most of his free time coaching soccer.