April Bayer is a first-year Ph.D. student in Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She obtained her M.A. in English Literature from the University of South Dakota and recently published her thesis “Women of Myth and Modernity: The Feminine Dual Self in Willa Cather's Short Fiction.” In 2021, she had the pleasure of receiving the University of South Dakota's Graduate Excellence in Teaching Award. April’s creative work has previously been published in Capsule Stories. Her research interests include Willa Cather studies, modernism, intersections of literature and media studies, and the pedagogy of composition and literature.