Daren Dean is the author of Far Beyond the Pale, I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Gone: Stories, The Black Harvest: A Novel of the American Civil War, and This Vale of Tears. His latest novel ROADS is forthcoming in 2023. He earned his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His work has been featured in Bloom, Bull, The Chattahoochee Review, The Columbia Tribune, Cowboy Jamboree Magazine and Press, Ecotone, Fiction Southeast, Flyover Country Literary Magazine, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, Huffpost, Kirkus Reviews, Louisiana Literature, Midwestern Gothic,  Ploughshares, StorySouth, Yemassee, and many others. "Affliction" was a Finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Fiction Contest for New Writers. His short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times.  The Black Harvest has been nominated for the Pen/Faulkner, the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, Midlands Author Award, and shortlisted for the Missouri Authors Award. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lincoln University of Missouri where he recently received The Dean's Award for Excellence in Scholarship (2022).