Ernie Hebert is a New Hampshire native, the author of eight published novels, one non-fiction book, and is a professor at Dartmouth College. In 2006, The New England Booksellers Association named him their fiction author of the year. In 2005, his novel Spoonwood received an IPPY (Independent Book Publishers) award for best regional novel in the Northeast. Mad Boys (1993) and The Old American (2000) were named "outstanding fiction" for those years by the New Hampshire Writers' Project. Live Free or Die was a New York Times "notable book" for 1989. His first novel, The Dogs March (1979), was cited for excellence by the Hemingway Foundation and remains in print after more than 25 years.