Born in Woodside, Queens and raised on Long Island, EDWARD BURNS has made fourteen feature films as a writer-director-actor and starred in many films, including Saving Private Ryan. Burns' first film The Brothers McMullen, premiered at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Grand Jury prize. The film also won ""Best First Feature"" at the 1996 Independent Spirit Awards. In 2015, he published Independent Ed, an inside look at his two decades as a pioneer in independent filmmaking, and in 2024 he moved to Seven Stories Press for his debut novel, A Kid from Marlboro Road, projected to be the first of several novels based on his childhood memories and the local story of Irish Americans in New York City and Long Island. The Marlboro Road Gang is the second novel in the series. Burns lives in New York City with his wife and two children.