Alicia Erian’s first book of short stories, The Brutal Language of Love, is currently out in paperback from Random House. Her first novel, Towelhead, will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2005. The novel has been optioned by Alan Ball, Academy Award-winning screenwriter of American Beauty and creator of the HBO series Six Feet Under, who hopes to make it his directorial debut. Erian’s fiction has appeared in magazines and journals such as Playboy, Zoetrope, Open City, The Sun, Nerve, and the Iowa Review.