Karol Lagodzki, a native of Poland, is an exophonic author of English-language fiction. His stories have appeared in Invisible City, Storm Cellar, NUNUM, Streetlight Magazine, and elsewhere, and he has won Panel Magazine’s Ruritania Prize for Short Fiction. Controlled Conversations is his debut novel.

He holds an MFA in creative writing, buys more books than he can read or afford—usually novels and short story collections, though he’s been known to pick up an odd book of poetry or accessible science—and gives back to the literary community by serving as a reader for literary journals. Karol’s non-writing careers have ranged from fixing stucco while dangling from roofs in Paris to sorting through human cadaver heads in Florida to developing and marketing medical devices for critically ill people in the American Midwest, but his true ambition is to remain a student for as long as he possibly can and make sure more stories make it out of his head and onto the page.

Karol lives halfway down a Southern Indiana ravine with his wonderful, unconventional family, a scurry of squirrels, a passel of possums, a gaze of raccoons, a descent of woodpeckers, and a large dog.