Peter Trachtenberg, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence, is the recipient of a Whiting Award for nonfiction, the Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and the Jerome Lowell DeJur Award for Fiction from the City College of New York. His essays and short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, TriQuarterly, Chicago, and have also been broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered.

He is the author of THE CASANOVA COMPLEX: Compulsive Lovers and Their Women (Angus & Robertson, 1989) and 7 TATTOOS: A Memoir in the Flesh (Crown 1997).

His current book, THE BOOK OF CALAMITIES (Little Brown, 2008) is a philosophical inquiry into a common ill: human suffering.

Also a performance artist, he lives in New York City.