Karol Nielsen is the author of Black Elephants, a memoir published by Bison Books in Fall 2011. She has contributed an essay and a poem to Smith Magazine’s The Moment, an anthology forthcoming from Harper Perennial in Fall 2011. Excerpts of her memoir were selected as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays. Her poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. She has contributed reporting to the New York Times, New York Newsday, Jane’s Intelligence Review, the Stamford Advocate, the Buenos Aires Herald, and others. Her essays and poems have appeared in Guernica, Lumina, North Dakota Quarterly, Old Red Kimono, Permafrost, RiverSedge, and Epiphany—before she became nonfiction editor of the magazine. She teaches memoir writing at New York University.