KAYA DIERKS writes from her bedroom in San Francisco, California. She is a recent graduate from Yale University, where she received the 2025 Elmore A. Willets Prize for Fiction and was one of six writers recognized by the 2026 Wallace Prizes. Her fiction appears in Black Warrior Review, The Adroit Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other places. She was the Runner-Up for the 2025 Adroit Prize for Prose. Currently, she is at work on a novel.