Richard Babcock has spent his career as a writer and editor, straddling fiction and nonfiction. While serving as a top magazine editor in New York and Chicago, he published three novels. He has taught writing at Northwestern University, among other colleges, and he has worked as an editor and/or collaborator on many books by other writers. He lives with his wife, the novelist and biographer Gioia Diliberto, in Woodbury, Connecticut.

Babcock’s fourth novel, A Small Disturbance on the Far Horizon, comes out in July 2025.