Antonya Nelson was born January 6, 1961, in Wichita, Kansas.

[1]: 251  She lives in Telluride, Colorado; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and Houston, Texas.

[2] Nelson's short stories have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker,[3] Quarterly West, Redbook, Ploughshares,[4] Harper's,[5] and other magazines.

[1]: 251 For a 1999 issue on The Future of American Fiction, The New Yorker magazine selected Nelson as one of "the twenty best young fiction writers in America today".

[6] Nelson teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers,[1]: 251  as well as in the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program.