Gooch is the author of "Smash Cut" and "Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor,” which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, NYT bestseller and Notable Book of the Year. A Guggenheim Biography fellow, he received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, and a Furthermore publishing grant from J.M. Kaplan. His newest book is “Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love.”