About me
Sonya Larson joined GrubStreet in 2005, and helped to grow the organization from offering 80 classes a year to over 600. Since then she has managed GrubStreet's many and proliferating programs, and served as Program Director for several years.
Now, as the Director of the Muse and Advocacy, Sonya oversees the staff, organization, sponsorship, and execution of GrubStreet's annual conference of 800+ writers, guest authors, literary agents, editors, and publishing innovators. She also spearheads Grub's efforts to expand access to classes and services for writers of historically marginalized backgrounds. Sonya also represents GrubStreet at conferences nationwide, including AWP, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Book Expo America.
Sonya's short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2017, American Short Fiction, The American Literary Review, Poets & Writers, The Writer's Chronicle, Audible.com, West Branch, Salamander, Memorious, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, Del Sol Review, The Red Mountain Review, and The Hub. She has received awards and honors from Best American Short Stories 2017 and 2015, the Pushcart Prize, Glimmer Train, Meridian, Salamander, the American Literary Review, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is at work on a novel about a Chinese community living in rural Mississippi in the 1930s, which earned her an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation. In 2016 and 2018 she was awarded fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center.
Sonya received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she served as editor of The Madison Review, and her MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.