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Whitehead, the bestselling author of Zone One and an amateur player, lucked into a seat at the biggest card game in town—the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. In this raucous social satire—equally exhilarating for those who’ve played cards their whole life or who have never picked up a hand—he chronicles the gritty subculture of high-stakes Texas Hold-em.
Colson Whitehead is the author of the New York Times bestseller Zone One as well as the novels Sag Harbor; The Intuitionist, a finalist for the PEN/ Hemingway award John Henry Days, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Apex Hides the Hurt, winner of the PEN Oakland Award. He has also written a book of essays about his hometown,The Colossus of New York. A recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in New York City.
Laurie Winer is a long-time journalist who has been on staff at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. She is a founding editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Laurie is inexplicably proud that she has played poker in Vegas, Macau, and every card room in Southern California.