Joanna Ruocco is a prize-winning author and co-editor of the fiction journal Birkensnake. In 2013, she received the Pushcart Prize for her story "If the Man Took" and is also winner of the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Ruocco received her MFA at Brown, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Denver. She is the author of DAN, Another Governess/The Least Blacksmith-A Diptych, A COMPENDIUM OF DOMESTIC INCIDENTS, MAN'S COMPANIONS, THE MOTHERING COVEN, THE WEEK, and THE WHITMIRE CASE. She is an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at Wake Forest University.