Katherine Standefer is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey To Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life, which is a Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction. Lightning Flowers was also selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice/Staff Pick, named one of Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of Fall 2020, was shortlisted for the 2018 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Her writing appeared in The Best American Essays 2016. Standefer earned her MFA at the University of Arizona and teaches for Ashland University’s Low-Residency MFA. She lives on a piñon and juniper-studded mesa in New Mexico with her chickens.