Mary Helen Stefaniak

MARY HELEN STEFANIAK's new novel, The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, will be published by W. W. Norton & Company in Fall 2010. An excerpt appears in the Spring 2009 issue of Epoch magazine.

Mary Helen Stefaniak grew up in a bicultural household: her father was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; her mother was born in Gordon, Georgia. Stefaniak is a writer of fiction and essays, whose work has appeared in many publications, including The Iowa Review, EPOCH, Short Story, The Yale Review, AGNI, and The Antioch Review, and in several anthologies, including New Stories from the South: The Year's Best 2000 & 2006 (Algonquin Books) and A Different Plain (University of Nebraska Press). She has also served as a commentator on Iowa Public Radio, a columnist for The Iowa Source, and a contributing editor for The Iowa Review and for Cerise Press, an online journal of art and literature.

Her first novel, The Turk and My Mother (W. W. Norton & Co.), received the 2005 John Gardner Fiction Book Award from Binghamton University, and it was recognized by the Wisconsin Library Association for Outstanding Literary Achievement. It has been translated into several languages.

Her collection of short fiction, Self Storage and Other Stories (New Rivers Press), received the Wisconsin Library Association's 1998 Banta Award for Literary Excellence, and her novella, "The Turk and My Mother" (EPOCH, Fall 2000) was shortlisted for the O. Henry Prize.

She has presented writing workshops, book discussions, and readings at bookstores, libraries, universities, and other venues from Florida to Alaska. She's enjoyed visits with many book clubs and community groups--including readers of Il Turco di Mia Madre (Einaudi, 2007) in Fiera di Primiero, Italy. Stefaniak is a graduate of Marquette University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has taught in the M.F.A. programs at Pacific University in Oregon and at the University of Nebraska. She divides her time between Iowa City, where she and her husband John live in a 150-year-old stagecoach inn they recently restored, and Omaha, where she teaches at Creighton University.