MacDonald, Marylee: - Marylee MacDonald grew up in Redwood City, California, married her high school sweetheart, and worked as a carpenter in California and Illinois. When she's not writing, she's hiking in the red rocks of Sedona, walking on a California beach, or plucking snails from her tomatoes. Her memoir, SURRENDER, won a Wishing Shelf Book Award. Her short stories have won the Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award, the Barry Hannah Prize, the Ron Rash Award, the Matt Clark Prize, and the American Literary Review Fiction Award. Her short story collection, BONDS OF LOVE AND BLOOD, was a Foreword Reviews' INDIEFAB Finalist, and her novel, MONTPELIER TOMORROW, was a Gold Medal winner in the Readers' Favorites annual book awards. Her most recent short story collection, BODY LANGUAGE, contains stories about the resilience of the human spirit. To help writers who haven't been able to find an agent, she wrote THE BIG BOOK OF SMALL PRESSES AND INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS.She currently splits her time between Tempe, Arizona, where her husband is a professor, and California, where she tries to stay out of the way of fires.