Justin Torres is the author of Blackouts, winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lambda Literary award, and the Southern California Book Award. His debut novel, We the Animals, won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. He teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles.