Laura Joyce Davis won the 2013 Poets & Writers California Exchange Award, given every three years to introduce one emerging fiction writer and poet to the New York literary community. She received a 2010-2011 Fulbright scholarship in the Philippines to complete research for her novel about sex trafficking. She was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize, the 2006 Best New American Voices, and was a two-time winner of the Mills College Prize for Graduate Fiction. She lives in Oakland with her husband and two children.