Laura Marello's first novel Claiming Kin (Guernica Editions 2010) was a finalist for the Paterson Prize in Fiction and nominated for the PEN/Bingham Award. Her second novel, Tenants of the Hotel Biron (Guernica Editions 2012) was given a bilingual staged reading at the Gallerie Ivana Gavardie in Paris the fall of its release. Her third novel, Maniac Drifter was released from Guernica Editions in 2016. Marello's The Gender of Inanimate Objects and Other Stories was shorlisted for the Saroyan Prize from Stanford University Library. Marello's poetry chapbook Balzac's Robe was the second finalist for the Finishing Line Press New Women Writers Award. Marello has written twelve books. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, and a Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown Fellowship. She has benefited from residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Millay, Montalvo and Djerassi.