Called "a contemporary American Balzac" by New York Newsday, Jerome Charyn is the author of thirty novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, and other acclaimed works. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year, he has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1983. Charyn has also received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Minister of Culture. Parisian Jacques de Loustal began his career as an illustrator of comic books in the late 1970s. His short comics appeared in the Franco-Belgian magazines Metal Hurlant, Pilote, Nitro, Chic, and Zoulou. Noted for a painterly style in the tradition of David Hockney, Loustal has contributed to the magazine A Suivre, for which he created Coeurs de Sable, Barney et la Note Bleue, Un Jeune Homme Romantique, and Kid Congo.