Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s most recent book is The American Daughters (One World, 2024), which Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called “a vibrant picture of antebellum New Orleans.” He is also the author of the story collection The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (One World, 2021), which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Story Prize. His first book, We Cast a Shadow (One World, 2019), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and was longlisted for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University.