Tiffany D. Cates

Cates spent five years navigating Chicago’s transit and weather systems before moving to Oregon and earning her MFA in Creative Writing from Oregon State University. Strongly influenced by her degrees in philosophy and psychology, Cates writes around themes of personhood, the distance between self and other, and matters of free will. She is the author of the novels Juxtaposed, and the forthcoming Lady in the Blue Coat, and the founding editor of Townsend, a literary journal devoted to long-form fiction writers.

“You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.” 

Nelson Algren