Laurel Fantauzzo is the author of the nonfiction book The First Impulse, the novel My Heart Underwater, and co-editor of the anthology Press: 100 Love Letters. A 2016 finalist for the PEN/FUSION Award, she has taught at the Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. In fall 2018, she joined the University of Hawai’i as an Assistant Professor of English.

“The NWP provided me invaluable time and resources to travel, research, read, think, and write. With the Iowa Arts Fellowship, I was able to do the patient, slow work of processing and internalizing a mystery of the Philippines before I committed it to the page. My thesis became my book, The First Impulse. At Iowa, I also had the opportunity to develop my companion vocation, teaching. I developed lifelong skills, and lifelong friends. My colleagues’ passionate reading, writing, and teaching keep me inspired long past my time in the program.”