About

AnnElise Hatjakes holds an MFA degree in fiction from the University of Nevada, Reno. Prior to pursuing her MFA degree, she earned her master’s degree in writing. She lives in Reno with her husband, two cats, and five chickens and teaches at a school for gifted students and at UNR. She enjoys all things Reno, from competing in Texas hold ‘em poker tournaments to enjoying a nightcap at one of this lovely and strange city’s many dive bars.

Currently in her fiction, she is experimenting with the use of humor to temper depictions of a world that can feel unrelentingly bleak. Her manuscript from her MFA program represents the intersection of satire and dystopia, exploring the ever-narrowing gap between imagined dystopic futures and present-day news headlines. The first chapter of that manuscript is forthcoming in the journal, Drunk Monkeys, and one of her short stories was shortlisted for the Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction.

As an educator, she has worked to expose her students to diverse voices that are often excluded from the canon. She is the recipient of the University of Chicago's Outstanding Educator Award, and the speech and debate team she coaches has competed on an international level.