Marco Verdoni was born and raised in Saginaw, MI. He is an MFA graduate of the New Writers Project in Austin, TX, and a Fulbright scholar. His essay “When to Tell Someone You Went to Prison” is the winner of the 2019 Steinberg Essay Prize, and appears in the Fourth Genre Spring 2020 issue. His short story “Immigrant Song” appears in Akashic Books’ anthology Prison Noir.

His memoir An American Adolescence: My Decade Growing Up Behind Bars will be published by Spiegel & Grau. Currently, he lives and writes in Baltimore, MD.