Aram Saroyan is an internationally known poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright. Among his books of poetry are Aram Saroyan and Pages (both from Random House) and the collection, Day and Night: Bolinas Poems (Black Sparrow, 1999). Saroyan is also the author of several books of prose, including Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation; Last Rites (a book about the death of his father, the playwright and short story writer William Saroyan); Trio: The Intimate Friendship of Oona Chaplin/Carol Matthau/Gloria Vanderbilt; The Romantic (a Los Angeles Times Book Review Critics’ Choice selection); Friends in the World: The Education of a Writer (a memoir); and Rancho Mirage: An American Tragedy of Manners, Madness and Murder (a true crime Literary Guild selection). The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts poetry awards (one of them for his controversial one-word poem “lighght”), Saroyan is a past president of PEN USA West. From 1996-2011 he taught in the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the painter and architectural historian Gailyn Saroyan.