The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

Mary Helen Stefaniak (born January 22, 1951, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American author of fiction best known for her novels The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia (2011, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award), The Turk and My Mother (2004, winner of the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award), and her short story collection Self Storage and Other Stories (1997, winner of the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Award). A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop with an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, she is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at Creighton University and has taught at various institutions while publishing in prestigious journals like The Yale Review and AGNI.com, Author's website