Linda Mannheim is the recipient of a year 2000 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in prose writing. Her stories have appeared in Nimrod International Journal, The Gettysburg Review, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, New York Stories, and a number of anthologies. Her short story "Friends of Banda" shared second place for the Nimrod/Hardman: Katherine Anne Porter Prize given by Nimrod International Journal this year. Much of Mannheim's fiction takes place within the context of political upheaval and urban dissolution. She spent the first seventeen years of her life in Manhattan and currently hangs her hat in Miami, where she is at work on a short story collection called, Noir. An excerpt from "Friends of Banda" can be found at: http://www.utulsa.edu/nimrod /featured/featured.html.