Monica McFawn is a writer, children’s book illustrator, comedian, and artist living in Michigan.  Her short story collection, Bright Shards of Someplace Else, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her comedy writing has appeared in The Offing and The Belladonna, and has been staged at Second City’s Mary Scruggs Works by Women Festival.  She is also the author of an art and poetry chapbook, “A Catalogue of Rare Movements,” and her screenplays and plays have had readings in New York and Chicago.  McFawn is a recipient of a NEA Fellowship in Literature and Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is an Associate Professor at Northern Michigan University, where she teaches fiction and scriptwriting. When she isn’t writing, drawing, or teaching, she trains her cat Cricket and her horse Eragon to do tricks.