Writing
Bernard’s short prose has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize anthologies, having appeared in Third Coast, The South Carolina Review, Crab Orchard Review, Craft, and New Delta Review, among other literary venues. Bernard has authored two prose chapbooks—Puzzle Pieces (Paper Nautilus Press, 2016) and Fly Back at Me (Sundress Publications, 2017)—and their novel-in-stories manuscript has been finalized in book prizes with Texas Tech University Press and Southeast Missouri State University Press.
Bernard is currently writing a novel and essays.
Editing
Bernard has worked for various literary publications, including The Review Review, Pithead Chapel, The Nervous Breakdown, and The Cincinnati Review. They currently serve as a fiction editor at Tahoma Literary Review, a biannual print journal that publishes literary fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.
Advocacy
A DEIB advocate, Bernard writes and speaks on neurodiversity, disability, and inclusion, and works s a life coach at Autism Personal Coach. Bernard is also a proud board member of the Autistic Women’s Alliance and NeuroGuides: Life Guides for Autistics.
Education, Awards, and 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. 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 earned a Ph.D. in creative writing and literature.
“Bernard Grant’s stories are compassionate, deeply perceptive explorations of what happens to people who can’t move forward.”
“Trapped by circumstance, by past traumas, by themselves, Bernard’s characters manage to hope for different lives, even as they accept that they probably won’t get them. They speak to each other, and to us, in ways that are simultaneously complex and straightforward, but always believably, and inevitably poignant. These are quietly unsettling stories that sit uneasily in your heart long after you’ve finished them.”