Adam Levin grew up on the North Shore of Chicago and is the author of two books, both published by McSweeney’s—Hot Pink, a story collection, and the novel The Instructions, which takes place over four days and nine hundred pages, and is about one Chicago Public Schools revolt and a ten-year-old who thinks he’s the Messiah. The Instructions won the prestigious New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, as well as the Indie Booksellers Choice Award and many others.

 Important echoes in Levin’s work include the voices of George Saunders, who was his teacher in the M.F.A. program at Syracuse, J.D. Salinger, and David Foster Wallace. His style begins at sentence-level, and he talks frequently about the importance of falling in love with a book.

 Levin teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is the husband of the writer Camille Bordas.