Ari Ketzal grew up in several rural Alabama towns and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their work has been notable in The Best American Essays and a fiction semifinalist for the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship in Provincetown. They were honored as a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a 2026 Mass Cultural Council grant recipient. Their words have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Black Warrior Review, West Trade Review, Creative Nonfiction‘s “Sunday Short Reads,” and elsewhere.

photo: Amanda Miller