JAIME WRISTON COLBERT is the author of a linked stories collection, Dream Lives of Butterflies, which won the gold medal (first place) in the 2008 Independent Publisher Awards in the Short Stories Fiction category, and was a Finalist in the USABookNews Best Books of 2007 Awards and the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards; a novel, Climbing the God Tree , winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Prize; and the fiction collection Sex, Salvation, and the Automobile , winner of the Zephyr Publishing Prize. Her stories have been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize, have been a finalist twice for the Katherine Porter Fiction Prize, and have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including: TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Tampa Review, Connecticut Review, New Letters , Green Mountains Review, Snake Nation Review, Louisiana Literature and broadcast on NPR's "Selected Shorts." She has had stories anthologized in Ohio Short Fiction , and Peculiar Pilgrims - Stories From the Left Hand of God , and a story presented at the 2007 Boston Fiction Festival, and performed throughout Maine by PCA Great Performances. Originally from Hawaii, she is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY, Binghamton University.