Reif Larsen was raised in Cambridge, Mass., and now lives in Brooklyn. He studied at Brown University, and has taught at Columbia University, where he is finishing his MFA in fiction. He is also a filmmaker and has made documentaries in the United States, the United Kingdom, and sub-Saharan Africa. His widely acclaimed debut novel The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet traces a twelve-year-old genius cartographer attempts to understand the ways of the world. The novel, which Stephen King calls "a treasure", includes various diagrams, notes and illustrations of maps, family trees, road signs, bugs, birds and animals.