Ariel Dorf­man is a Chilean-Amer­i­can author, born in Argenti­na, whose award-win­ning books in many gen­res have been pub­lished in more than fifty lan­guages and his plays per­formed in more than one hun­dred coun­tries. Among his works are the plays Death and the Maid­en and Pur­ga­to­rio, the nov­els Wid­ows and Kon­fi­denz, and the mem­oirs Head­ing South, Look­ing North and Feed­ing on Dreams. He writes reg­u­lar­ly for the New York Times, Wash­ing­ton Post, Los Ange­les Times, New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Guardian, El País, and CNN. His sto­ries have appeared in The New York­er, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Three­pen­ny Review, and Index on Cen­sor­ship, among oth­ers. A promi­nent human rights activist, he worked as press and cul­tur­al advi­sor to Sal­vador Allende’s chief of staff in the final months before the 1973 mil­i­tary coup, and lat­er spent many years in exile. He lives with his wife Angéli­ca in San­ti­a­go, Chile, and Durham, North Car­oli­na, where he is the Wal­ter Hines Page Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Lit­er­a­ture at Duke University.