Vanessa Blakeslee is the author of Perfect Conditions: stories (2018), which is the winner of the 2019 IPPY Silver Medal for Short Story Fiction; the novel Juventud (2015); and the story collection, Train Shots (Burrow Press) which won the 2014 IPPY Gold Medal in Short Fiction. Vanessa's writing has appeared in The Southern Review, The Paris Review Daily, Publishers Weekly, The Globe and Mail, and Kenyon Review Online, among others. She teaches writing at Rollins College and serves on the Board of Directors for the Jack Kerouac Writers-in-Residence Project of Orlando, Florida. You can find her at vanessablakeslee.com and on Twitter @vmblakeslee.