Mary Helen Stefaniak

Mary Helen Stefaniak is an American writer. She comes from the family of Croats from Hungary, that originates from Novo Selo (Tótújfalu) in Hungary, being thus a part of the indigenous Croatian minority in that country. She is the author of the books Self Storage and Other Stories, The Turk and My Mother and The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia. Her collection of short stories Self Storage and Other Stories, received the Banta Award from the Wisconsin Library Association for the best book (fiction on non-fiction) published by a Wisconsin author in 1997. She is also the winner of the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Stefaniak been featured in the antology New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2000. In September 2010, independent publishers rated her novel The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia as Indie-Next "Great Read".

She teaches creative writing at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska and at The University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. She and her husband live in Iowa City. They have a son, Jeff, and two daughters, Liz and Lauren.

In 2011, she won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia.

External links

• Official Website
• The Turk and My Mother at Norton Books