Matty Friedman worked as a reporter who took him from Lebanon to Morocco, Cairo, Moscow and Washington, DC, and to conflicts in Israel and the Caucasus. He was a reporter for the Associated Press, and his writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Tablet Magazine, and others. He grew up in Toronto and lives in Jerusalem. His first book, The Manuscript of Aleppo (Algonquin, 2012) won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize and the Sophie Brody Medal from the ALA, among other awards. His second book, "Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story" (Algonquin, May 2016) has received outstanding reviews in Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and the Library Journal, and has been compared by the New York Times to Tim O'Brien's masterpiece "The Things They Carry". ."