Marie-Helene Bertino was born and raised in Philadelphia. She is the author of the novels Beautyland (Best Books of 2024 (So Far) NYTimes, TIME Magazine, Esquire, Elle)), Parakeet (NYTimes Editor's Choice) and 2 a.m. at The Cat's Pajamas, and the short story collection Safe as Houses. Awards include The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Mississippi Review Prize, The Center for Fiction NYC Emerging Writers Fellowship and The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Electric Literature, Granta, Guernica, BOMB, among many others. She is the recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook Writers Colony, The Center For Fiction NYC, and Sewanee Writers Conference, where she was the Walter E. Dakin fellow. In June 2021, "Disrupting Realism," an online master class and panel she designed to make graduate level resources available at no charge, was attended by 1,300 people. She has taught in the Creative Writing programs of NYU, The New School, and Institute for American Indian Arts. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Department at Yale University.