15 Small Press Books You Don’t Want to Miss This Winter
Lauren
Lauren D. Woods is the author of The Great Grown-Up Game of Make Believe, a short story collection that won the 2024 Autumn House Fiction Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters’ (TIL) Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction. The book was also longlisted for the 2026 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Originally from the Dallas area, Lauren now lives and writes in Washington, DC.
Her writing has appeared in Best Small Fictions, as well as The Antioch Review, The Normal School, Passages North, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Red Rock Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. Her work was cited as notable in The Best American Essays 2023, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Lauren works in foreign policy and consulting and lives with her husband, four children, two cats, and a guinea pig.
