Laura A. Wright received her PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2018 and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Montana Western.  Her research interests include multiethnic literatures of the United States, graphic narrative, and dystopian literature.  Her book manuscript, “Prizing Difference: PEN Awards and Multiculturalist Politics in American Fiction,” examines the intersection of national prizes for the novel with discourses surrounding multiculturalism from the 1930s to the present. She has received a fellowship from the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute and archival fellowships from the libraries at the University of Virginia and Princeton University in support of this project.  She is contributing an essay on the impacts of book prizes on the literary career of Luis J. Rodriguez to the anthology (co-edited by Josephine Metcalf and Ben V. Ogluin) entitled In the Long Run: Luis J. Rodríguez’s Life and Literary Legacy —Essays, Interviews, and Reflections, with Selected New Writings by the Author.