Lauren Groff
November 2016
Lauren Groff is the author of the novel The Monsters of Templeton, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, Delicate Edible Birds, a collection of stories, and Arcadia, a finalist for the L. A. Times Book Award. Her third novel, Fates and Furies, was a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work has appeared in journals including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Tin House, One Story, and Ploughshares, and in the anthologies 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories,The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and four editions of the Best American Short Stories. She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband and two sons.
Merritt Tierce
October 2016
Merritt Tierce was born and raised in Texas, graduated from college at 19, and then waited tables for ten years before attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. From 2011 to 2014 she worked as the executive director of an abortion fund in North Texas. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and is a 2013 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” author. Her first book, the novel Love Me Back, won the 2014 Texas Institute of Letters’ Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction and was shortlisted for the PEN/Bingham prize for debut fiction and named a best book of 2014 by The ChicagoTribune. Merritt’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Oxford American, and Southwest Review, among other magazines and publications. She has been a fellow at the Yaddo artists’ community and Writers Omi at Ledig House, and lives in Denton, Texas.
Lauren Haldeman
September 2016
Lauren Haldeman is the author of the poetry collection Calenday (Rescue Press, 2014, finalist for the 2014 Julie Suk Award) and the artist book The Eccentricity is Zero (Digraph Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Fence, jubilat, Fourteen Hills and The Rumpus. A comic book artist, illustrator, puppeteer and poet, Lauren has taught in the U.S. as well as internationally, including a reading and lecture tour of South Africa sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she was a recipient of the 2015 Sustainable Arts Foundation Award. You can find her online at laurenhaldeman.com and on twitter @laurenhaldeman.