Kaia Preus received her MFA from Hollins University and was a 2019 Author Fellow through the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first book, The War Requiem, was a finalist for the 2021 Minnesota Book Award and won the 2018 Essay Press and University of Washington Bothell MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics Book Contest. Her work has appeared in The Briar Cliff Review, The Drum, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Augsburg University and The Loft, and she is also the Personal Statement coach for prospective graduate students at St. Olaf College. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of essays about Halloween.