There will be one last author this 2014-2015 school year speaking for the Visiting Writers Series at Northeast Community College. Mary Helen Stefaniak will be on campus April 16 from 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. in Hawk’s Landing at the Student Center.

Stefaniak grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is a graduate of Marquette University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught in the M.F.A. (Master of Fine Arts) programs at Pacific University in Oregon and at the University of Nebraska.

Stefaniak is an author of fictional stories and personal essays.   Her first novel, The Turk and My Mother, received the 2005 John Gardner Fiction Book Award from Binghamton University and was recognized by the Wisconsin Library Association for Outstanding Literary Achievement. Her other book, The Cailiffs of Baghdad, was an IndieNext “Great Read” and winner of the 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. Stefaniak’s short stories have appeared in journals such as The Yale Review, Antioch Review, and North American Review.

Stefaniak currently divides her time between Iowa City where she lives with her husband and Omaha where she is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Creighton University.