Corin Cummings grew up in Vermont. In 1989 he was part of a performing group that toured parts of the USSR and was among the first American students to stay with Soviet host families. He was in Russia when the Berlin wall came down. He returned to Russia in 1994 and lived in Tomsk, Siberia, where he worked at one of the country's first independent TV stations. Cummings graduated from Marlboro College and the School for International Training in 1995. He wrote an honors thesis entitled "Shades of Journalism: An apprenticeship in Literary Journalism." He has worked as a freelance journalist and published in a number of newspapers and small magazines. 

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Cummings lives in Montreal with his wife and two sons.