NAFISSA THOMPSON-SPIRES

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is an American writer born in San Diego, California, in 1983. Her first book, 'Heads of the Colored People', won the Los Angeles Times Art Sidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the PEN Open Book Award, and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, amongst other prizes. She obtained a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois and Vanderbilt University. Her fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in New York Magazine's 'The Cut', The Root magazine and The Paris Review. She currently teaches fiction and television studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, as the Richards Family Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. For The New Menard Press, Nafissa contributed to the bestselling anthology 'On Being Ill'.