Mark Axelrod is a Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of English at Chapman University, California, USA. Prior to teaching at Chapman, he taught at the University of East Anglia, UK and the University of Edinburgh, UK. He is a graduate of both Indiana University, USA, (BA, MA) and the University of Minnesota, USA, (PhD). For nineteen years he has been the Director of the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing for which he has received five National Endowment for the Arts grants.