John Florio (find him on Twitter!) was raised in Flushing, NY. He credits the streets of Queens as one of his biggest influences, along with black-and-white movies, old superhero comics, Sports Illustrated, Humphrey Bogart, and the Hardy Boys.

A fan of pop fiction and creative nonfiction, Florio is the author of the historical crime novels, Sugar Pop Moon and Blind Moon Alley. With Ouisie Shapiro, he wrote One Nation Under Baseball: How the 1960s Collided with the National Pastime, and One Punch from the Promised Land: Leon Spinks, Michael Spinks, and the Myth of the Heavyweight Title. Florio and Shapiro are regular contributors to The New Yorker and The Atlantic; their work has also been seen on VICE and Sports Illustrated.