April Ayers Lawson is the recipient of the George Plimpton Award for Fiction, as well as a writing fellowship from The Corporation of Yaddo. "Virgin" was also named a favorite short story of the year by Flavorwire Magazine and anthologized in The Unprofessionals: New American Writing From The Paris Review. Her fiction has appeared in the Norwegian version of Granta, Oxford American, Vice, ZYZZYVA, Crazyhorse, and Five Chapters, among others. She has lectured in the Creative Writing Department at Emory University, and is the 2016-2017 Kenan Visiting Writer at University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.