Chris Vola was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1985. A graduate of the Columbia University MFA program, he is the author of six books. These include a short story collection, a poetry collection, two novels, Pour One Out: Cocktail Odes to TV’s Most Dearly Departed, a collection of drink recipes paying tribute to beloved deceased television characters, and I is for Illuminati: An A-Z Guide to Our Paranoid Times, a humorous primer on today’s biggest conspiracy theories.

His articles about literature, drinks, food, and pop culture appear widely in print and online journals, including PopMatters, Paste Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Thrillist, The Rumpus, and Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He lives in New York and bartends at Little Branch, where he trained under the late cocktail pioneer Sasha Petraske.