Chris Orcutt has written 20 books, including the nine-episode odyssey Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome. Born in Maine, he has spent most of his life in New York. He attended college in Boston, graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with a degree in philosophy. His professional writing career began at the now-defunct Taconic Newspapers (where he was honored by the New York Press Association), followed by freelance reporting for The Poughkeepsie Journal, New York's oldest newspaper. In his 20s and early 30s, while honing his craft as a fiction writer, Orcutt earned a living as a high school American Studies teacher, college writing instructor, and speechwriter. His earlier fiction-including the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series and One Hundred Miles from Manhattan-has earned praise from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. His newest work, a nine-episode epic of teen life in the Big '80s, was written for anyone who ever made a mixtape for someone they loved-and waited to see if they'd make one back. For over a decade, while the world moved online, Orcutt rewound to 1985-87 and stayed there-immersing himself in '80s teen culture and shunning the internet in monastic devotion to his magnum opus.

Writing drafts on typewriters and vintage computers, blasting everything from A-Ha to ZZ Top, and drinking enough coffee to fill a swimming pool (seriously), he set out to craft an authentic, nostalgic, and fearless exploration of the suburban teenage experience in 1980s America. The result-a 1.2-million-word novel-prompted one cultural historian to dub him "Lord of the '80s" and another "The American Tolstoy." He loathes bad writing, stoplights, Grammarly, and pretentious people-but loves '80s music, Peanuts comics, his dog Dash, Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, and cross-country skiing. A teen during the Big '80s, Orcutt now lives quietly in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife and Muse, Alexas.