Shannon Pufahl grew up in rural Kansas. She teaches at Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction. Her essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review and elsewhere, on topics ranging from John Brown and the Antebellum Midwest, to personal memoir.  She lives in the Bay Area with her wife and their dog. Her debut novel, On Swift Horses, was published by Riverhead Books in 2019 and was a A Lambda Literary Award Finalist for 2020.