Brooke Shaffner

Brooke Shaffner’s novel Country of Under (Split/Lip Press) won the 2024 Foreword Indies Silver Award for Literary Fiction, a Next Generation Indie Book Award Grand Prize for Fiction, and the 1729 Book Prize, judged by Diane Zinna. The novel was the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction runner-up and was shortlisted for Dzanc Books' Prize for Fiction and Black Lawrence Press’s Big Moose Prize. An excerpt won Scoundrel Time Magazine's Editors’ Choice Award and the Asheville Writers’ Workshop Fiction Contest. Brooke is working on a memoir tentatively titled EVERYTHING I LOVE IS OUT TO SEA, an excerpt of which won the 2023 Lit/South Award, judged by Melissa Febos, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been published in The Hudson Review, Scoundrel Time, Necessary Fiction, The Rumpus, Marie Claire, BOMB, Lost and Found: Stories from New York, and Litmosphere. She has received grants from United States Artists, the Saltonstall Foundation, and the Arts & Science Council and residencies from MacDowell, Ucross, Saltonstall, Edward Albee, Jentel, I-Park, and VCCA. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Dean’s Fellow, and won the Charles Lloyd Writing Award at Davidson College. 

In addition to Between the Lines workshops, Brooke has taught writing and literature through the North Carolina Writers Network and at Rutgers University, The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, Charlotte Lit, Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development, Athens Academy, and the Globe Institute of Technology. She has created college essay workshops for College Strategies and GEAR UP. She has written English Language Arts curricula for Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta public high schools through Kaplan K-12 Learning Services and edited curricula for Achievement First charter schools. 

Brooke and her partner Niteesh Elias founded Freedom Tunnel Press to publish books that straddle borders and Listening Labs to help organizations and individuals to become more connected, collaborative, and creative.