SHIRA NAYMAN is a clinical psychologist who works as a strategic brand marketer and has taught psychology, literature, narrative medicine, and creative writing at Columbia University, Rutgers University, and Barnard College. She has published fiction and nonfiction in the Atlantic Monthly, the Georgia Review, New England Review, Confrontation, Boulevard, Cousin Corinne, and her short fiction has also been broadcast on NPR. She is the author of Awake in the Dark (novella and stories), The Listener (a novel), and A Mind of Winter (a novel). She is the recipient of grants from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the Australia Council for the Arts Literature Board (three times), and received the Cape Branch Award for an Emerging Woman Writer.