Brian Hall was born in 1959. He grew up in Massachusetts and attended Harvard College. After two years spent travelling in Western and Eastern Europe, he wrote Stealing from a Deep Place: Travels in South-Eastern Europe, and a novel set in Vienna, The Dreamers. From 1989 through 1991 he made several trips to Yugoslavia, in preparation for writing The Impossible Country. He currently lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and daughter.