Blackbird ArchiveGwen E. Kirby
Gwen E. Kirby is the author of Shit Cassandra Saw (Penguin Books, 2022). Her work appears or is forthcoming in One Story , Tin House , Guernica , Mississippi Review , Ninth Letter , Blackbird , SmokeLong Quarterly , and elsewhere. Guest editor Aimee Bender selected her story “Shit Cassandra Saw . . .” for Best Small Fictions 2018 and it also appears in the 2018 Wigleaf Top 50. Her story “Midwestern Girl Is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories” won the 2017 DISQUIET Literary Prize for Fiction. She has been awarded scholarships to the Rivendell Writers’ Colony and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Currently, she is the associate director of programs and finance for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference at the University of the South, where she also teaches creative writing.
Katarzyna Jakubiak is the author of a short story collection Nieostre widzenia (Biuro Literackie, 2012). Her scholarship, translations, and fiction have appeared in the magazines Twórczość , Gulf Coast , Callaloo , Theater Journal , the anthology New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008), and elsewhere. Her book-length Polish translations of Yusef Komunyakaa’s poetry won the New Voices in Translation Award from the Polish magazine Literatura na świecie in 2006. She is an associate professor of English at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Photo by Piotr Dygul
Gwen E. Kirby’s work has appeared in Guernica , Mississippi Review , Ninth Letter , One Story , and The Best Small Fictions 2018 . She is the winner of the 2017 DISQUIET Literary Prize for Fiction and holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Johns Hopkins University. She is the Writer in Residence and George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy.