Melissa Holbrook Pierson is the author of five books, including The Place You Love Is Gone and Dark Horses and Black Beauties: Animals, Women, a Passion. She has written about books, film, and occasionally their intersection, for the Daily Beast, Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Village Voice (a long time ago), Orion, and many others. She writes essays and pays bills from her home near Woodstock, New York.