Heather Abel is the author of the novel The Optimistic Decade (Algonquin, 2018). Her essays have appeared widely, including in the New York Times, Slate, Buzzfeed, Tablet, and the Paris Review Daily. Her short stories have been published by Five Points and Agni and cited as distinguished by Best American Stories. She worked as a reporter and editor in California and Colorado before moving to New York where she received an MFA in fiction writing from the New School University. She has taught creative writing at UMass Amherst and the New School and is finishing a novel set in Northampton that explores climate change, parenthood, and (in brief) the natural history of the Pioneer Valley from the glacial age to the present.