He holds a
Bachelor of Arts from
Fordham University and a
Master of Fine Arts from
Columbia University. His biography on Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Dorothy Day,
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, was awarded the
PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction in 2004, and received
National Book Critics Circle Award nomination. He became an editor at
Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1992 and worked there for over two decades. He is currently a fellow at the
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. He is a long-time contributor to the
American Catholic journal
Commonweal. Don Brophy, managing editor for the Catholic book publisher Paulist Press, includes
The Life You Save May Be Your Own in his 2007 book
One Hundred Great Catholic Books from the Early Centuries to the Present. Reinventing Bach was a finalist for the 2012
National Book Critics Circle Award in the Criticism category. He wrote the afterword for
13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty by
Mario Marazziti, published by
Seven Stories Press in March 2015. He has three sons Leo, Pietro and Milo with his wife, Lenora. ==Works==