Madeline ffitch is the author of the short story collection Valparaiso, Round the Horn and the novel Stay and Fight, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Washington State Book Award, the LA Times Book Award, and was the 2023 Ohio Center for the Book pick for the National Book Festival. Her short fiction has received two O. Henry Awards, and was included in the 2024 Best American Short Stories anthology. ffitch’s writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, and elsewhere. She has received an Ohio Arts Council Grant for Individual Excellence, as well as fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell and the Blue Mountain Center. Her second novel, Avalon, Rise, as well as a new collection of short fiction, Stump of the World are forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She lives with her two children in the woods of Appalachian Ohio.