Joshua Cross is the author of Black Bear Creek: Stories (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), which won the 2022 Independent Press Award for Short Story Collections. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Big Muddy, Failbetter, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. A native West Virginian, he now lives with his wife and son in Conway, SC, where he is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Coastal Carolina University and Fiction Editor of Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature. He is also a graduate from Shepherd University, Class of 2003, and the first alumnus to be featured as the Common Reading author.