Naomi Benaron is the winner of the 2006 G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for fiction for her short story collection, Love Letters from a Fat Man. She was the winner of the 2005 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, the Juniper Creek Short Story Contest, and was short-listed or received honorable mention for numerous prizes and awards. Before pursuing her MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles, she worked for many years as a geophysicist. Currently, she teaches writing and geology at Pima Community College. The title story of her collection has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has just completed her first novel, a story that follows a young Rwandan boy through the years surrounding the 1994 genocide.