Amy Hassinger grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Barnard College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she received her MFA in fiction writing. She is the author of three novels: NINA: ADOLESCENCE, THE PRIEST'S MADONNA, and AFTER THE DAM, forthcoming in September 2016. Her writing has been translated into five languages and has won awards from Creative Nonfiction, Publisher’s Weekly, and the Illinois Arts Council. Her work has appeared in numerous venues, including The New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, The Writers’ Chronicle, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches in the University of Nebraska’s MFA in Writing Program.