Abraham Verghese was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1955. He received an M.D. from Madras University, India, in 1979 and came to the U.S a year later to do a residency in Tennessee. He also earned an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1991. Verghese has been involved mainly in medical research and teaching. His specialties include internal medicine, pulmonary diseases, geriatrics, and infectious diseases; the latter has led to an interest in AIDS, which has been the subject of much of his writing. Verghese's thesis was a collection of stories about AIDS, and he then went on to write My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS. My Own Country received the Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction and was selected by Time as one of the top five books of 1994. Verghese is also the author of The Tennis Partner: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss, and his short stories, articles, and reviews have appeared in magazines and newspapers such as North American Review, Sports Illustrated, and MD. Verghese, who is divorced, has two children, Steven and Jacob and resides in El Paso, Tex.