Andrew Payton (he, him, his) received an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. His publications include work in Alaska Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, New Ohio Review, Masters Review, Nimrod, Southern Humanities Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. His writing has won the James Hearst Poetry Prize at North American Review, a finalist prize in The Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award for short fiction, and was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013. He has received an Emerging Writer Fellowship at Aspen Summer Words and J. William Fulbright fellowship to the Slovak Republic.