Shelby Wardlaw is a writer, teacher, and translator from Austin, Texas. She holds a B.A. in English and Russian Studies from Vassar College, an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University. She currently teaches in the Writing Program at Rutgers University.

In her spare time, she offers creative writing classes for adults looking to develop their craft. She is the co-founder of the Red Light Fiction Reading Series in Brooklyn (@redlightfiction) and the Vice President for Non-Tenure Track Faculty in the Rutgers AAUP-AFT faculty union.

Her fiction, non-fiction and Russian poetry translations have appeared in Drafthorse, Interim, Northwest Review, Hunger Mountain, iō Literary Journal, Philadelphia Stories, hex literary, Vassar Review, and the Neon Door Literary Exhibit. In the spring of 2020, she won Honorable Mention in the Pigeon Pages Fiction Contest. She was a Finalist for the 2021 Salamander Fiction Prize and the 2021 McGlinn Prize for Fiction and was selected as one of the top five finalists in The Writer magazine’s 2020 Fall Short Story Contest. In 2021, her story “Intervention Handbook” was nominated for the Best American Short Stories Anthology. In 2022, her story “Papaya Erectus” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Praised by The Writer editorial staff as a “stunningly talented writer,” Shelby is now working on her first novel.