Marian Crotty is the author of the short story collections: Near Strangers, winner of the 2023 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize, and What Counts as Love, winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She has received fellowships or scholarships from Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the US Fulbright Program. She is an Associate Professor of Writing at Loyola University Maryland and a contributing editor at The Common. She grew up in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina and now lives in Baltimore.