Melissa Bowers is the first-place winner of The Writer magazine’s personal essay contest, a multi-prize winner of Pithead Chapel’s 2019 Short Story Award, and a finalist for the 2020 Lamar York Short Fiction Prize as well as the 2020 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. She was shortlisted for Barren Magazine’s inaugural Flash Fiction Prize this year, and Susanna Kaysen recently awarded her the 2020 Breakwater Review Fiction Prize. Melissa’s work has also appeared in Writer’s Digest, HuffPost, and The Boston Globe Magazine, among others.