Mark Powell is author of four novels, most recently The Sheltering. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Breadloaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, and in 2014 was a Fulbright Fellow to Slovakia. In 2009 he received the Chaffin Award for contributions to Appalachian Literature. He is an Associate Professor of English at Stetson University where he also directs the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program.