Gwen Thompson was the kid who always ran out of paper for writing assignments in elementary school, when she wasn't getting busted by her teachers for reading too much. This prompted her to earn a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Boston University, winning the Florence Engel Randall Short Story Award and the Lawrence H. Blackmon Book Collecting Prize. She graduated from Bowdoin College, where she won the Nathaniel Hawthorne Short Story Prize, and her novella Men Beware Women , published this fall, won the 2012 Miami University Press Novella Contest. When she's not creating imaginary settings as a writer, she helps people re-create their real-life settings as a feng shui consultant at Graceful Space .