Leigh Ann Ruggiero

Leigh Ann Ruggiero attended schools in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Maryland before moving to Montana, where she teaches literature and writing and can finally stargaze without the interference of light pollution.

Unfollowers: Chapter One

Barb Eklund didn’t choose where she was born. She knew no one could. But her birthplace, instead of being something she was passingly grateful for, became a regret lodged between her ribs like the pain of a torn intercostal. Her parents brought her from Maryland to rural Ethiopia when she was four. Barb didn’t understand what she was leaving behind when she boarded the plane: her stuffed cat Oscar, the season of winter, or the red bike with training wheels she rode when winter was in abeyance.