Sean Bernard directs the BA Creative Writing Program at the University of La Verne. His story collection Desert sonorous was awarded the 2014 Juniper Prize, his novel Studies in the Hereafter was published in 2015 by Red Hen Press, and he’s the recipient of a prose fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. He holds degrees from Arizona, Oregon State, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his fiction and non-fiction has appeared in numerous journals.

His second novel, Can Writing Be Taught & Other Novel Ideas, was published by What Books in Fall 2026.