Lauren D. Woods is the winner of the 2024 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize for her debut short story collection, THE GREAT GROWNUP GAME OF MAKE BELIEVE (forthcoming 2025). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in the Antioch Review, Passages North, The Normal School, Hayden's Ferry Review, Fiction Southeast, Wasafiri, The Forge Literary Magazine, Lit Hub, Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her work was cited as notable in Best American Essays 2023 and is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2024. Her work has also been nominated for Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. In 2023, the first chapter of her novel in progress placed in the Gutsy Great Novelist contest. She lives in Washington, DC with her family. She tweets @Ladiwoods1 and can be reached at [email protected].