DR. REZA ASLAN is an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions. He holds a Ph.D. in the sociology of religions from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a master of fine arts in fiction from the University of Iowa, where he was the Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Aslan’s first book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It was named by Blackwell as one of the hundred most important books of the last decade. He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization and the End of the War on Terror (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism), as well as the editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East. Aslan is the founder of AslanMedia.com, an online journal devoted to the arts, politics, news, and entertainment from the Greater Middle East, and the co-founder of BoomGen Studios, a first-of-its kind transmedia film company focused on stories and storytelling from West, Central, and South Asia. Born in Iran, he now lives in Los Angeles, where he is associate professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.