Swati Avasthi received her B.A., and at the University of Minnesota, where she is currently studying for her M.F.A. She has received a Loft's Mentor Series Award, a Marcella DeBourg Fellowship, University of Minnesota's GRPP, the Thomas H. Shevlin Fellowship, and her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, Split, is a New Voices pick, a Cybils Award Young Adult Fiction winner, a Minnesota Book Award finalist, and a Parent's Choice Silver Award Winner.