Deni Y. Béchard was born in British Columbia to French Canadian and American parents and grew up in both Canada and the United States. His new book, Cures for Hunger, is a memoir about growing up with his difficult father. Béchard’s  first novel, Vandal Love,  was published in French and Arabic and was published in the US in 2012. It won the 2007 Commonwealth Prize, both for the best first book in Canada and for the best overall first book in the British Commonwealth. Béchard’s articles, stories and translations have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers and he has done freelance reporting from Northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan. He is currently working on Empty Hands, Open Arms, a book about grassroots conservation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.