Elizabeth Poliner is the author of the novel, As Close to Us as Breathing (Lee Boudreaux Books / Little, Brown & Co.), winner of the 2017 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in Fiction, finalist for the Harold Ribalow Prize for Jewish fiction, and an Amazon Best Book of 2016. Previous books are Mutual Life & Casualty, linked stories, and What You Know in Your Hands, poems. In addition to Ascent (an early story called “Earth Science”), her stories have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, The Common, Colorado Review, and TriQuarterly, among other journals. She teaches in the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs at Hollins University, where she am Director of the Jackson Center for Creative Writing.