about

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Sean Bernard directs the BA Creative Writing Program at the University of La Verne, where he has served as editor of the literary journal Prism Review since 2008. From 2021-2025, he served on AWP’s Board of Directors, and from 2021-24, as prose editor for Veliz Books, editing collections by Allison Wyss, Kathleen March, and Anu Kandikuppa. He holds degrees from Arizona, Oregon State, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, studying with Geoff Becker, Tracy Daugherty, and Marilynne Robinson, among many others.

His story collection Desert sonorous won the 2014 Juniper Prize, and his novel Studies in the Hereafter was published in 2015 by Red Hen Press. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in journals including The Iowa Review, Copper Nickel, The Gettysburg Review, and Glimmer Train, and his work has been honored by groups including the National Endowment for the Arts, Jentel Artists Residency Program, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Poets & Writers, Sierra Arts Foundation, and Oregon Literary Arts.

His second novel, Can Writing Be Taught & Other Novel Ideas, is forthcoming in fall 2026.

• novel-in-progress about waiting tables, fires in the Western US, and becoming a better liar through writing

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