Originally from the Chicagoland area, A.A. Balaskovits has lived all across the American Midwest and South but currently calls Ohio her home. She is the author of two short story collections, the prize winning Magic For Unlucky Girls and Strange Folk You’ll Never Meet.
She received her B.A. from Loras College, her MFA from Bowling Green State University and her Ph.D. from The University of Missouri.
She has served as an Assistant Fiction Editor for The Mid American Review, Co-Editor in Chief for Cartridge Lit, an online journal of video game literature, and the Social Media Editor for The Missouri Review, where she launched two series for the blog: the Working Writers Series which interviewed writers without major publications and Literature on Lockdown, a series of curated essays by currently or former incarcerated writers as well as the people who teach them.
Selected Awards and Honors:
Best Small Fictions – “The Candy Children’s Mother” (2020) and “Get Bent” (2021)
Craft Literary Flash Fiction Contest Finalist for “Mama Had a Baby and Her Head Popped Off” (2019)
The Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize Honorable Mention for “Egest Leporidae” (2018)
Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist (short stories) – Magic for Unlucky Girls (2018)
The Golden Key Flash Fiction Open Honorable Mention for “In the Belly of the Bear” (2018)
Wigleaf top 50 very short fictions for “The Mother Left Behind” (2017)
Santa Fe Literary Awards Program Grand Prize Winner: Magic for Unlucky Girls (2015)
Sequestrum New Writers Award Winner: “Put Back Together Again” (2015)
St. Lawrence Book Award Finalist: Magic For Unlucky Girls (2015)
Permafrost Book Prize in Fiction Finalist: A Girl Without Arms and Other Monsters (2015)
Subito Book Prize Finalist: A Girl Without Arms and Other Monsters (2014)
Hunger Mountain Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Finalist: “Put Back Together Again” (2013)
Interviews: