Photo by Peter Frey

Laura Wexler lived in Athens, Georgia from 1997 to 2001, serving as Assistant Editor of Georgia Magazine and teaching nonfiction writing in the UGA English Department while she completed the research for Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America (Scribner, January 2003). Her essays and articles have appeared in DoubleTake, The Oxford American, and The Utne Reader, and her work was selected for The Beacon Best of 1999: Creative Writing by Women and Men of All Colors, edited by Ntozake Shange. A graduate of Penn State University and the University of Kansas, Wexler has received scholarships and fellowships to the Breadloaf Writers' Conference, the Macdowell Colony, and the Harry S. Truman Library. She now lives in Baltimore, Maryland where she teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University and serves as a senior editor for Style magazine. She curates the Stoop Storytelling Series with co-founder Jessica Henkin.