Joseph Allen Boone is the author of three works of nonfiction and the libretto for a musical based on Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man. Boone is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Humanities Center, Stanford Humanities Center, Rockefeller-Bellagio Center, the Bogliasco Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Huntington Library. A resident of Los Angeles, California, Boone is an endowed professor of English at the University of Southern California.