Born to a large and voluble Massachusetts working class family, Julie Checkoway is the author of Little Sister: Searching for the Shadow World of Chinese Women and the editor of the bestselling Creating Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and numerous anthologies. In 2001, she gave up tenure at the University of Houston (where she had been a professor and director of the creative writing program) and while producing and reporting radio stories for NPR’s Morning Edition and PRI’s This American Life, she came across the story of artist Billy Pappas. With the encouragement of her older brother, she set out to make WAITING FOR HOCKNEY, her first film. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and two daughters.