Sheila O'Connor is the author of six award-winning novels for adults and young people. Her books include Where No Gods Came, winner of the Minnesota Book Award and the Michigan Prize for Literary Fiction, and Sparrow Road, winner of the International Reading Award. Her novels have been included on Best Books of the Year lists by Booklist, VOYA, Book Page, and the Chicago Public Library, among others. O'Connor received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and her work across genres has been recognized with the Loft Literary Center's McKnight Fellowship, two Bush Artist Fellowships, and several Artist Initiative grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Programs at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she serves as fiction editor for Water-Stone Review.