Clare Beams is the author of the novels The Garden and The Illness Lesson (Doubleday) both New York Times Editors’ Choices, and the story collection We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books) which won the Bard Fiction Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in One Story, Conjunctions, Ecotone, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA programs at the University of Pittsburgh and Randolph College.