Laura Spence Ash

Laura Spence-Ash’s debut novel, Beyond That, The Sea was chosen as a GMA Buzz Pick and an Indie Next Pick and has been translated into nine languages. Spence-Ash was named a Publisher’s Weekly Writer to Watch in 2023, and her short fiction has appeared in One Story, New England Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She was the founding editor of CRAFT, an online literary journal, and she has taught for Rutgers University, the Princeton Adult School, and One Story. She has received fellowships and support from MacDowell, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Rutgers-Newark, where she received the Presidential Fellowship, and she lives in New Jersey. Her new novel, The Thing You Most Wanted, is forthcoming from William Morrow in 2027.