J. Mark Bertrand is a writer who lives with his wife Laurie in South Dakota. He has a BA in English from Union University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, where he worked as production editor of the literary magazine Gulf Coast. For several years, he served on the board of Strange Land Literacy Foundation, a non-profit promoting literature, theology, culture studies and fellowship in Houston. Now, in addition to teaching on the faculty of Worldview Academy, an academic summer camp for high school students, he is the fiction editor at Relief Journal. Mark's novel The Pattern of Wounds is now being shopped around for publication. A Soldier of Misfortune, the book he's been working on since 1996, is still ... in the works. His recent fiction has appeared in The New Pantagruel, Hardluck Stories and InFuze Magazine, recent nonfiction in The Wittenburg Door and Fire By Nite. His flash fiction has appeared in Flashing in the Gutters. His story "Strings" is forthcoming in The Ankeny Briefcase.