Dana Dean Thomann grew up on a struggling family farm in Riverside, Iowa. Inspired by her rural background, Thomann crafts the stories of her people with a specific focus on the drama and heartache of the 1980s Farm Debt Crisis. In 2016, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. Thomann currently teaches Rhetoric in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. Beyond writing, she spends her leisure time training for The Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI), growing vegetables and native flowers, as well as taking long pasture walks with the farm dog—an Australian Shepherd named Temple in homage to Temple Grandin. Thomann’s work has been featured in Post Road, and her short story “Flood Gap” was the Flyway Journal of Writing and Environment’s Home Voices contest winner.