Leah Fran­qui is a grad­u­ate of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and received an MFA at NYU-Tisch. She is a play­wright and the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Gold­berg Play­writ­ing Award, and also wrote a web series for which she received the Alfred Sloan Foun­da­tion Screen­writ­ing award (afterever​after​web​series​.com). A Puer­to Rican-Jew­ish Philadel­phia native, Fran­qui lives with her Kolkata-born hus­band in Mum­bai. Amer­i­ca for Begin­ners is her first novel.