Ricardo Chavez Castañeda was born in Mexico City in 1961. One of the founding members of the Mexican literary movement known as the "Crack" that began in the 1990s, a group of young writers who broke with literary conventions in a reaction against the Latin American "Boom," he has won many prizes for his writing, which includes novels, short stories, essays, and children's books. He holds a BA in Psychology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, a Master's Degree in Latin American literature from New Mexico State University, and is currently a Visiting Professor at Middlebury College.