Les Standiford is author of the novels Spill (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991), Done Deal (HarperCollins, 1993), Raw Deal (HC, 1994), Deal to Die For (HC, 1995), Deal on Ice (HC, 1997), Presidential Deal (HC, 1998), Black Mountain (Putnam, 2000), and Deal With the Dead (Putnam, 2001). He is a past recipient of the Frank O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. Standiford is currently Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, where he has lived since 1985 with his wife Kimberly, a psychotherapist, and their three children.

Standiford attended the Air Force Academy, Columbia University School of Law, and holds a B.A. in Psychology from Muskingum College in Ohio and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah. He spent twenty years in the West, working at times for the U.S. Forest, the Utah Parks Company, and the U.S. Park Service. He is a former screenwriting fellow and graduate of the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Standiford is also the co-author of Bones of Coral; a screenplay based on the novel of the same name by James W. Hall, for MGM-Pathe. He is a member of the Associated Writing Programs, Mystery Writers of America, and the Writers Guild.

Standiford wrote the screenplay adaptation of Spill, which has been released as a feature film starring Brian Bosworth and seen recently on Showtime. He contributed a chapter to the national best-seller, Naked Came the Manatee (Putnam, 1997), with Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, James W. Hall, et al., and was contributing editor of The Putt at the End of the World, a collective novel of golf, published by Warner Books in June of 2000.