Carrie Laben grew up in western New York. They earned their BS at Cornell and later their MFA at the University of Montana. They now live in Queens, where they spend a lot of time staring at birds.Their work has appeared in such venues as Birding, Clarkesworld, The Dark, Indiana Review, Okey-Panky, and Outlook Springs. In 2017 they won the Shirley Jackson Award in Short Fiction for their story "Postcards from Natalie" and Duke University's Documentary Essay Prize for the essay "The Wrong Place". In 2015 they were selected for the Anne LaBastille Memorial Writer's Residency, in 2018 they were a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2019 they were a resident at Brush Creek.This is their first novel. They are currently at work on a book of essays about urban environmentalism.
