Caleb Daniloff

Caleb Daniloff was born in 1969 in Washington, D.C. In 1981, the shy and nervous sixth‑grader moved with his parents to the former Soviet Union, where his father, Nicholas, was stationed as bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report. Caleb was enrolled in Soviet Pioneer camp, Soviet school, and a rigorous Soviet gymnastics program, soon dreaming in Russian and passing for a Muscovite. Not surprisingly, he adopted a mess of Soviet‑style habits: smoking, binge‑drinking, black‑marketeering, absenteeism, huffing, and a taste for ABBA and Soviet death metal. In 1986, after five‑and‑a‑half years in Moscow, Nicholas Daniloff was arrested by the KGB and jailed on bogus espionage charges. The family was deported.

Back on American soil, Caleb finished his high school career at Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding school in northwestern Massachusetts. He attended the University of Vermont and later Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program. Caleb has worked in journalism, radio, and advertising. He has published in numerous publications, including Runner’s World, National Public Radio, WBUR, Guernica, Publisher’s Weekly, The Boston Globe, and The Boston Phoenix. He has received multiple awards including the Ralph Nading Hill Jr. Literary Prize, several National CASE awards, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Caleb’s first book, Running Ransom Road: Confronting the Past One Marathon at a Time, a memoir about running as a sobriety tool, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Fall, 2012. He is represented by Wendy Sherman of Wendy Sherman Associates, Inc. Caleb lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife and daughter.