Paula Treick DeBoard is a writer, latte drinker and all-around slave to public education. Her first novels—written in the back seat of a 1977 Chevy Caprice station wagon where her parents let her jostle around, unprotected by a seatbelt—were sadly lost in one cross-country move or another. After earning a BA in English from Dordt College in 1998, Paula thought, “I’ll teach high school during the week and write fiction on weekends,” a delusion which persisted for a decade, during which time she wrote exactly one short story. In 2010, she earned an MFA in Fiction from the University of Southern Maine and discovered a passion for staring at a laptop screen for long hours. Paula’s short fiction has appeared in The Sycamore Review, deCOMP, Cantaraville and The Shine Journal. Occasionally, her work has appeared in venues that have later closed—although surely this is only a coincidence.These days, Paula splits her time between teaching (at the University of California, Merced) and writing. Her novels are The Mourning Hours, The Fragile World and The Drowning Girls (April 2016). Her heart—and any remaining spare time—belongs to Will and their four-legged brood.