Laura Warrell is the author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, which was also long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Golden Poppy Book Award through the California Independent Booksellers Alliance. Laura, named a “Writer to Watch” by Publishers Weekly, grew up in Ohio. She graduated from the Creative Writing Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and she has attended residencies at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop, where she also taught fiction. She has taught creative writing and literature through the Emerging Voices program at PEN America Los Angeles, the Berklee College of Music, and other academic institutions in Los Angeles and Boston. Laura’s writing has been published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Writer, and other publications.