Philip Connors was born in Iowa and grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota. He earned a B.A. in print journalism from the University of Montana, then worked for several years at the Wall Street Journal, mostly as an editor on the Leisure & Arts page. In 2002 he left New York to work as a fire lookout in New Mexico's Gila National Forest, where he has spent every summer since. That experience became the subject of his first book, Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout, which won several awards and was named the best nature book of the year by Amazon.com. His essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications including Harper's, Salon, The Nation, Lapham's Quarterly, The Paris Review, The London Review of Books, and n+1. His second book, All the Wrong Places, will appear from W. W. Norton & Co. in February 2015.