Janet Peery is the author of the novel The River Beyond the World (Picador/St. Martin’s, 1996) and Alligator Dance (SMU Press, 1993), a collection of short stories. Recent short stories appear in Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, Chattahoochee Review, Kansas Quarterly, Southwest Review, Oklahoma Today, New Virginia Review, 64 Magazine, American Short Fiction, and other journals. She has also published in Best American Short Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 1993), The Pushcart Prize XVI: Best of the Small Presses (Pushcart Press, 1991), The Pushcart Prize XVII: Best of the Small Presses (Pushcart Press, 1992), and 25 Fiction Writers to Watch in the Next Decade (Writer’s Digest Magazine, 2000). Peery is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Whiting Writers Award, and an NEA Fellowship. She was a National Book Award Finalist for Fiction in 1996. Peery writes book reviews for the L. A. Times and The Washington Post. She lives in Virginia and teaches at Old Dominion University.  

Photo by Beth Bergman