Eric Shonkwiler is the author of three books and has lived and worked in every contiguous U.S. time zone. His debut novel, Above All Men (MG Press, 2014), won the Coil Book Award, was chosen as a Midwest Connections Pick by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association, and was included as a Best Book of 2014 selection on multiple lists, including The Next Best Book Club’s and Chicago Book Review’s. His second book, Moon Up, Past Full (Alternating Current Press, 2015), is a collection of award-winning novellas and short stories, including two Luminaire Award for Best Prose winners and one finalist, five Pushcart Prize nominees, two Best of the Net Award nominees, three storySouth Million Writers Award nominees, a Queen’s Ferry Press Best Small Fictions Prize finalist, and a Coalition of Texans with Disabilities Pen 2 Paper Fiction Prize finalist. His latest novel, 8th Street Power & Light (MG Press, 2016), is a stand-alone sequel to Above All Men.

Eric has had writing appear in Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Fiddleblack, [PANK] Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. He was born and raised in Ohio, received his MFA from University of California-Riverside as a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow, and was a New River Gorge Winter Writer-in-Residence in West Virginia. He has taught college-level English and Creative Writing, and has formerly served as Regional Editor for Los Angeles Review of Books, a reader for [PANK], and Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor for Crate Magazine: The Journal of UCR. Eric currently serves as Director of Critique Services & Acquisitions Editor at Alternating Current, as well as an occasional Staff Book Reviewer for The Coil.