Daniel Kennedy is a writer from rural Pennsylvania. He attended Boston University on a wrestling and academic scholarship. He received his MFA from Virginia Tech, where he won the Emily Morrison Prize in Fiction, and his PhD from the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program, where he won the Inprint Donald Barthelme Memorial Prize in Nonfiction and the Provost Teaching Excellence Award. His writing has appeared in New England Review, The Florida Review, Appalachian Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Arts & Letters, BULL, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and listed as a notable essay in Best American Essays. His scholarly interests include rural fiction, creative nonfiction, horror, and film. He is presently working on his first novel, Break, a story of rural characters battling monsters within and outside of themselves. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas.