Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida. She is the author of the novel Find Me and the short story collections What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, and The Isle of Youth, which was selected as a Best Book of 2013 by over a dozen outlets, including NPR and The Boston Globe. Both collections were shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, and she has been the recipient of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an O. Henry Award. She has taught creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, Colby College, and Columbia University, and in the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is currently the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard University.