K. Dawn Goodwin

Who She Is: Dawn Goodwin is the daughter of recovered fundamentalist missionaries and a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, where she majored in English and Creative Writing, despite her fear-n-loathing of Famous Literature.

Where Is She now: For the last fourteen years Goodwin has been living in rural western Georgia, meth capital of the Southeast. She now enjoys blowing stuff up, taking pictures of billboards, and shopping at the Dollar General. She is a single mom of three kids because of course. "When you’re this far below the Bible belt," Goodwin explains, "there’s really not much else to do but breed. And burn trash."

Publishing History: Between lighting explosives, feeding her naked toddlers Diet Coke in their baby bottles, and letting them beat the hell out of an old rotary phone with some PVC pipe in the neighbor’s ditch, she has published numerous freelance creative pieces in local and national papers, pimped out her essays for grant money, made insurance coding sound sexy, and had her book awarded Finalist in the Georgia Writer’s Association 2013 Author of the Year competition–all that, while wearing nothing but a bathrobe and a bad bleach job, praise Jesus. "And when you’re working that hard Lord," she says, "the carpet don’t have time to be matchin no dang drapes."