Gwendolyn Paradice is a queer, disabled, Cherokee-Caucasian writer of fiction and nonfiction. A 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, they're also the author of the Hudson Prize winning short story collection More Enduring for Having Been Broken (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) as well as a chapbook co-authored with poet Kara Dorris, Carnival Bound (or, Please Unwrap Me) (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2020). Their creative work has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best American Essays, and Best of the Net, and their short stories and essays can be found in Booth, Zone 3, Crab Orchard Review, Tin House Online, The Journal of America Folklore , and others. Much of their work constellates investigations of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and disability. They work most often in fiction under a speculative umbrella, producing short form and longform magical realism, horror, weird fiction, absurdism, and fantasy, which tend to be informed by cultural memory, history, and folkloristics. They often explore form and structure as a way to investigate paths for self-expression and as a means of storytelling that seeks to cultivate a dialogue between reader, text, and author. Gwendolyn also looks towards other forms of art for inspiration and entertainment, as they also enjoy video games, well-written television and film, art exhibitions, anime, and from time to time, a good heavy metal concert. They retain a PhD from The University of Missouri, an MFA from Bennington College, and MA and BA degrees from the University of North Texas, north of Dallas, where they were born and raised.