Melissa Pritchard is the author of three short story collections, The Instinct for Bliss, Disappearing Ingenue, and Spirit Seizures, as well as three novels, Late Bloomer, Selene of the Spirits, and Phoenix. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, among them the Flannery O'Connor Award, The O. Henry Award, The Pushcart Prize, The Janet Kafka Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Hawthornden and Howard Foundations. A professor of English, she teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Arizona State University. Her author website is www.melissapritchard.com.