Sandra Simonds, an award-winning writer and professor, is the author of ten books, including Burning Oracle, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in 2026, and Triptychs (Wave Books), which was a 2022 New York Times selection. Further Problems with Pleasure won the University of Akron Poetry Prize, and Mother Was a Tragic Girl won the Cleveland State University Open Poetry Prize. Simonds’s first novel, Assia (Noemi Press, 2023), based on the life of Assia Wevill, won the 2023 Vermont Book Award in Fiction and was shortlisted for the Dzanc Fiction Prize. Her poetry, criticism, and creative nonfiction have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Best American Poetry, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Granta, Boston Review, Ploughshares, and others. Simonds has taught at Thomas University, Bennington College, Florida State University, and the University of Montana. She earned a B.A. in Psychology and English at UCLA, an M.F.A. at the University of Montana, and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Florida State University.