About the Author

Robert Ford is a novelist and playwright with an extensive background in classical music and theatre. His growing body of work has been well-received on both sides of the Atlantic by readers, theatre-goers, and critics. He's received numerous awards, including two from the Texas Institute of Letters, a Stanley Drama Award, a James Fellowship, a James A. Michener Fellowship, and a fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Ford lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he directs the Arkansas Playwrights Workshop, is playwright-in-
residence at TheatreSquared, and occasionally finds time to perform with the North Arkansas Symphony. His wife, actor & director Amy Herzberg, is professor of drama at the University of Arkansas.

Before turning to theatre and fiction writing, Ford attended Manhattan School of Music for two years, completed his Bachelors in English from Principia College in Illinois, and received his Master of Music degree from Yale School of Music, where he studied with flutist Thomas Nyfenger. He went on to win Second Prize in the 1983 Koussevitsky Competition, compete in the International Flute Competition in Paris, perform on the McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase on WQXR in New York, and in recital at Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter auditorium, among other venues. While at Yale he enrolled in the noted conducting pedagogue Otto-Werner Mueller’s introductory class, and studied composition with Roger Reynolds, Martin Bresnick and Jacob Druckman.

Ford drew heavily on his early experiences as a classical musician while writing The Student Conductor, in which a young American flees to West Germany in 1989 to study with an aging conductor, a brilliant teacher who jealously guards his pre-war past. He falls in love with a recent defector from East Germany, a musician with her own dark secrets, all while the Berlin Wall crumbles in the background.

Besides his graduate degree in music, Ford holds an MFA in Acting from Rutgers and another MFA in Playwriting & Screenwriting from the Michener Center for Writers, University of Texas at Austin.
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