Don Zancanella is the author three novels: CONCORD, about a year in the lives of Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne (Serving House Books); A STORM IN THE STARS, about Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the writing of Frankenstein (Delphinium/HarperCollins); and ANIMALS OF THE ALPINE FRONT, forthcoming in August 2024 from Delphinium. Inspired by true events in the Italian Alps during World War One, ANIMALS OF THE ALPINE FRONT tells the story of an Italian girl trapped in the fortress city of Trento, an American boy pressed into service in the Austrian army, and the founding of Italy’s first animal welfare organization.

Don received the John S. Simmons/Iowa Short Fiction Award for his book WESTERN ELECTRIC. He also won an O.Henry Prize, and one of his stories was cited as a distinguished story of the year in the 2019 Best American Short Stories. He has published widely in literary magazines including Prairie Schooner, The Hopkins Review, New Letters, Fourteen Hills, The Alaska Quarterly, and Epiphany. He was born in Laramie, Wyoming, and has lived in Virginia, Colorado, Missouri, and New Mexico, where he taught at the University of New Mexico. He studied with John Edgar Wideman, Thoreau and Emerson scholar Robert D. Richardson, and John Williams, author of Stoner.

Don lives in Boise, Idaho, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife and their dogs.