Cynthia Anderson grew up in western Maine. Her collection of stories, River Talk, was a Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2014 and received the 2014 New England Book Festival award for Short Stories. Other work has appeared in the Christian ScienceMonitor, Boston Magazine, the Miami Herald, the Iowa Review, Redbook, Huffington Post, and others. Anderson lives with her family in Maine and Massachusetts. She teaches writing at Boston University.