L. Shapley Bassen's "Portrait of a Giant Squid" was the First Place winner in the 2015 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest. She is the author of Summer of the Long Knives (Typhoon Media) and Lives of Crime & Other Stories (Texture Press). Her second collection, Showfolk & Stories (Inkception Books) will appear in Dec., 2016. She was a finalist for the 2011 Flannery O’Connor Award, was a 1st reader for Electric Literature, won the 2009 APP Drama Prize and a Mary Roberts Rinehart Fellowship, and is poetry/fiction reviewer for Brooklyner, The Rumpus, and others. Visit her online at http://www.lsbassen.com/