Sena Jeter Naslund, Ph.D., is the author of two short story collections Ice Skating at the North Pole and The Disobedience of Water, along with a novel the chapters of which were originally independent short stories, The Animal Way to Love. Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, The Iowa Review, The Georgia Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The American Voice, Alaska Quarterly Review and others. Her seven novels including critically acclaimed, national bestsellers Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits (about the Civil Rights Movement in her native Birmingham, Alabama), and Abundance, a Novel of Marie Antoinette.

A graduate of the U of Iowa Workshop, Sena Jeter Naslund has served many years as a Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Louisville and as founding Program Director of the low-residency MFA at Spalding U. Now retired, she has been a visiting professor in the MFA programs at the University of Montana, Indiana University, and Vermont College, as well as holding endowed visiting professorships at Montevallo U and the U of Alabama in Huntsville. This is her second participation in the International Conference on the Short Story in English.