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. Several of her short stories have been published, and she is a recipient of the 2023 Story.One Book Award in the category “A New Generation of Books.” Lara is the Archive Editor at Columbia Journal and teaches creative writing through the Incarcerated Writers Initiative. She is currently working on her debut novel, Quiet Coyote, a story about finding your place in a world that has already decided for you.

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.