Jolene McIlwain's fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in numerous literary journals, and in 2019's Best Small Fictions Anthology. Her work was named finalist for 2018's Best of the Net, Glimmer Train's and River Styx's contests, and was a semifinalist in Nimrod's Katherine Anne Porter Prize. She's taught literary theory/analysis at Duquesne and Chatham Universities and worked as a radiologic technologist before attending college (BS English, minor in sculpture, MA Literature). She was born, raised, and currently lives in a small town in the Appalachian plateau of Western Pennsylvania.