Brenda Peynado's stories have won an O. Henry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award, a Dana Award, a Fulbright Grant to the Dominican Republic, and other prizes. Her work appears in journals such as Tor.com, The Georgia Review, The Sun, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review Online, and The Threepenny Review. She received her MFA at Florida State University and her PhD at the University of Cincinnati. She's currently writing a novel about the 1965 civil war in the Dominican Republic and a girl who can tell all possible futures. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida along with her husband, author Micah Dean Hicks.