Cris Beam is an author and professor in New York City. She is the author of Transparent (Harcourt 2007), a nonfiction book that covers seven years in the lives of four transgender teenagers, which won the Lambda Literary Award for best transgender book in 2008, and was a Stonewall Honor book. Her young adult novel, I am J, was released by Little, Brown in March 2011, and her memoir, Mother, Stranger was published by The Atavist and quickly reached the top ten on Kindle Singles. She's currently working on a nonfiction book about the state of foster care in the U.S. which will be released by Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt in 2013. Cris teaches creative writing at Columbia University, New York University, and Bayview Women’s Correctional Facility. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University and has received fellowships from the Point Foundation and the Corporation of Yaddo.

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