Lara Waas is a fiction writer based in New York City, where she is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine and others, and she is the recipient of the 2023 Story.One Book Award in the category “A New Generation of Books.” Lara teaches creative writing through Columbia Community Classes and the Incarcerated Writers Initiative.

Before moving to New York, Lara earned her BA in Comparative Literature at the University of Munich in Germany, where she later taught undergraduate classes and worked as a research fellow. She also spent time in Guatemala teaching English, which strengthened her passion for education and cross-cultural exchange.