A.A. Balaskovits was born in the Chicagoland area but now resides in South Carolina. She is the author of Magic for Unlucky Girls (Santa Fe Writers Project 2017). Her fiction and essays appear in Indiana Review, The Madison Review, The Southeast Review, Gargoyle, Apex Magazine, Shimmer and numerous other magazines and anthologies. She was awarded the New Writers Award from Sequestrum in 2015 and won the grand prize for the 2015 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards series. She is the co-Editor in Chief of Cartridge Lit.
The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest (The Mikey) is now an annual competition celebrating and compensating the best micro fiction and nonfiction online.