Tara Laskowski grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where many of her stories are set. She is the author of the story collection Bystanders and other fiction published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Mid-American Review, Flash Fiction International (Norton), and numerous other journals, magazines, and anthologies. She was awarded the Kathy Fish Fellowship from SmokeLong Quarterly in 2009, and won the grand prize for the 2010 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards Series. Since 2010, she has been the editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. Tara earned a BA in English with a minor in writing from Susquehanna University and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She lives in Virginia with her husband, crime writer Art Taylor, and their son.