LAUREN BECKER lives in Oakland, California. She is a freelance writer and editor who has worked as an attorney, a benefits counselor for people living with HIV/AIDS and in healthcare government relations. She is editor of a new literary journal, Corium Magazine, which will debut in March 2010, and writes short fiction that has appeared, or will, in places including Pedestal Magazine, Annalemma, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, PANK Magazine and Wigleaf. She runs a reading series called East Bay on the Brain and is very fond of postcards, dive bars and bubble gum.