Mary Helen Specht’s debut novel Migratory Animals (Harper) won the Texas Institute of Letters Best First Fiction Award and the Writers’ League of Texas work of Best Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Witness, The Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. Specht currently teaches creative writing at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, and her forthcoming novel Mudlark will be published by Ballantine in 2026.
