April Ayers Lawson is the recipient of the 2011 George Plimpton Award for Fiction, as well as a 2015 writing fellowship from the Corporation of Yaddo. “Virgin” was named a 2011 favorite short story of the year by Flavorwire magazine and anthologized in The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review (Penguin, 2016). Lawson’s fiction has appeared in the Norwegian version of Granta, Oxford American, Vice, ZYZYYVA, Crazyhorse, and Five Chapters, among others. She has lectured in the creative writing department at Emory University, and is the 2016-17 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.