Ryan Burden is a middle school teacher, a doctor of English and Creative Writing, and a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. His short story “Coming of Age” won Redivider’s 2016 Beacon Street Prize for fiction, and his novel Orphans was shortlisted for the 2024 Steel Toe Books Prose Award. His work has also appeared in Switchback, Gulf Stream, and JMWW, among other publications. Burden lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he continues to write fiction that blends emotional resonance with finely crafted prose.