Ben Stroud is the author of the story collection Byzantium (Graywolf), which won the 2013 Story Prize Spotlight Award and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Fiction Prize, and was named a Best Book of the Year by the Kansas City Star, Best Summer Book by the Chicago Tribune and Publisher’s Weekly, and a Best Book of the Month by Amazon. Ben’s stories have appeared in Harper’s, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, VQR, Oxford American, VICE, and One Story, among other places, and have been anthologized in the Pushcart Prize XLII, New Stories from the South, and Best American Mystery Stories. Originally from Texas, he holds a BA in English and History from the University of Texas at Austin and an MFA in Fiction and PhD in Twentieth-Century American Literature from the University of Michigan. He is the recipient of a 2014, 2018, and 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and has taught literature and creative writing at universities in the US and Germany. Currently, Ben is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Toledo.