MUIA is the winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction for her novel A Desert Between Two Seas, published with the University of Georgia Press. Her stories and articles have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Chicago Review, Grist, Image Journal, the Orison Anthology, Water~Stone Review, West Branch, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, and other journals. She is a frequent speaker and workshop facilitator, and serves as a teaching writer with Underground Writing, leading workshops with youth in juvenile detention. For thirteen years she served as a chaplain to inmates at the Skagit County Jail. She is the co-founder of New Earth Recovery, a nonprofit serving people in recovery from substance use disorder. Her novel was also a finalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and a Top Pick for the 2026 Southwest Books of the Year. Though she loves the desert, she lives in rainy Washington State. Find out more at www.amuia.net.