Thomas Mullen

Thomas Mullen is the author of The Last Town on Earth, which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today, was a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction.

His second novel, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, will be published in early 2010 by Random House. Since the publication of The Last Town on Earth, he has given lectures/readings to universities and community libraries (some of which have chosen The Last Town on Earth for "One Book/One Community" or "Freshman Reads" projects), literary festivals, and the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Mullen was born and raised in Rhode Island and graduated from Oberlin College. He has lived in Boston; in Chapel Hill, NC; in Washington, DC; and he now makes his home in Atlanta with his wife and two sons.

When not reading or writing, his greatest interests are music, film, travel, and hiking. The best books he read in 2009 were (in fiction) Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham, The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon, Nobody Move by Denis Johnson, Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter, and Enduring Love by Ian McEwan, and (in nonfiction) The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, The Assassin's Gate by George Packer, The Fall of Baghdad by Jon Lee Anderson, Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, and Operation Homecoming, edited by Andrew Carroll.