Stephanie Hammer teaches Comparative Literature and Creative Writing at UC Riverside. She is a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize for short fiction, and her story "Feel My Pain" received third place in the Mark Twain Fiction Award Competition this past year.  Her fiction has been published in the Bellevue Literary Review, NYCBigCityLit, Cafe Irreal, Mosaic, Thresholds,  Bridges, and Rhapsoidia.  She lives in Los Angeles, but visits Seattle at least once a year to commune with her best friend from second grade and visit the ghosts of her Norwegian relatives in Ballard.