Bonnie Jo Campbell's Women & Other Animals details the lives of extraordinary females in rural and small town Michigan. It won the Associated Writing Programs short fiction award, and is now out in paperback. Her story "The Smallest Man in the World" was awarded a Pushcart Prize, and her new novel Q Road has been named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book. The New York Times has called her stories "Bitter but sweetened by humor," and Publisher's Weekly said Campbell details, "domestic worlds where Martha Stewart would fear to tread."

Bonnie Jo Campbell grew up on a small Michigan farm, in a house her Grandfather Herlihy built in the shape of an H. She learned to castrate small pigs, milk Jersey cows, and make chocolate candy. When she left home for the University of Chicago, her mother rented out her room. She has since hitchhiked across the U.S. and Canada, scaled the Swiss Alps on her bicycle, and traveled with the circus. She has led adventure tours in Russia, the Baltics, and throughout Eastern Europe. After earning a master's degree in mathematics in 1992 she started writing fiction. She received her M.F.A. in writing from Western Michigan University, and lives in Kalamazoo.