Evan Lavender-Smith is the author of From Old Notebooks and Avatar. His stories and essays have been noted in Best American Nonrequired Reading and Best American Essays, adapted for stage and radio, and translated into several languages. Lavender-Smith’s writing has been praised in Bookforum, The Guardian, Harper’s, The Irish Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Vice, and other national and international media outlets. The founding editor of Noemi Press and former editor-in-chief of Puerto del Sol, he has recently served as a juror for the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, the Heinz Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. He is a member of the Creative Writing Studies Organization’s Board of Directors, the secretary of Phi Beta Kappa’s Mu of Virginia Chapter, the vice president of Virginia Tech’s Faculty Senate, and an assistant professor at Virginia Tech’s MFA Program in Creative Writing.