Barry Gifford is the author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into thirty languages. His most recent books include The Cuban Club, The Up-Down, Writers, Sailor & Lula- The Complete Novels, Sad Stories of the Death of Kings, Imagining Paradise- New and Selected Poems, The Roy Stories, and Landscape with Traveler.

He co-wrote with David Lynch the screenplays for the two movies they made together, Wild at Heart, based on the Gifford's 1990 novel, which is one of the eight novels in Sailor & Lula, and Lost Highway. Wild at Heart, directed by David Lynch, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1990, the same year in which the novel was published. Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.