Writing
Bernard’s fiction and essays have been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and have been published in Third Coast, The South Carolina Review, Crab Orchard Review, Craft, New Delta Review, and elsewhere.
Bernard has authored two prose chapbooks—Puzzle Pieces (Paper Nautilus Press, 2016) and Fly Back at Me (Sundress Publications, 2017). Their novel-in-stories manuscript has been finalized in contests with Texas Tech University Press and Southeast Missouri State University Press.
Bernard writes for BestColleges and is represented by Madison Smartt Bell of Ayesha Pande Literary Agency.
Editing
Bernard has worked as a reader, marketer, and editor for independent and university literary publications, including The Review Review, Pithead Chapel, The Nervous Breakdown, and The Cincinnati Review. Bernard is currently a fiction editor at Tahoma Literary Review.
Education, Awards, Honors
Bernard holds a BA in film studies and creative writing from The Evergreen State College and an MFA in creative writing from Pacific Lutheran University, where they were awarded the Carol Houck Smith Graduate Scholarship and the Deborah Tall Memorial Scholarship.
Bernard has also received fellowships and residency support from The Anderson Center at Tower View, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Fishtrap: Writing and the West, the Jack Straw Cultural Center, Mineral School, Vermont Studio Center, and the University of Cincinnati, where they taught writing while earning a Ph.D. in creative writing and literature.
In addition to Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations, Bernard’s writing has been anthologized, taught in creative writing classrooms, and finalized by or received prizes from contests with Crab Orchard Review, Cutbank Literary Journal, Paper Nautilus Press, Sequestrum Literary Journal, and elsewhere.