Kristen-Paige Madonia’s fiction has appeared in The South Dakota Review, Inkwell, and Pearl; in addition, her collection of short stories was recently listed as a semifinalist for the University of Iowa Press Short Fiction Award and the Spokane Prize. She is the recipient of the James I. Murashige Jr. Memorial Scholarship for Fiction, the Ronald Foote Scholarship for Short Fiction, and the 2005 Literary Women Festival of Authors Fellowship. In 2008 she was invited to work as a resident artist with The Studios of Key West, and last year she received the Marianne Russo Fellowship to attend the Key West Literary Seminar and advanced fiction workshop. She received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach; upon graduation she was named a Graduate Dean’s List Exceptional Artist and Scholar and was awarded the Best Thesis Award for the College of Liberal Arts for her collection of short stories. She was the inaugural graduate student in the English Department to receive the award. Madonia currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia where she teaches creative writing and is at work on her second novel; “Sandstorms” is an excerpt from that project.
Her novel excerpt, “Sandstorms,” appeared in Issue 21.1 – Winter/Spring 2009.
