TaraShea Nesbit’s first novel, The Wives of Los Alamos, was a finalist for the 2015 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She will be speaking on her second novel, Beheld, which is set ten years after the Mayflower pilgrims arrived on rocky, unfamiliar soil, Plymouth is not the land its residents had imagined. Seemingly established on a dream of religious freedom, in reality the town is led by fervent puritans who prohibit the residents from living, trading, and worshipping as they choose. By the time an unfamiliar ship, bearing new colonists, appears on the horizon one summer morning, Anglican outsiders have had enough. With gripping, immersive details and exquisite prose, TaraShea Nesbit reframes the story of the pilgrims in the previously unheard voices of two women of very different status and means. She evokes a vivid, ominous Plymouth, populated by famous and unknown characters alike, each with conflicting desires and questionable behavior. TaraShea holds a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Denver. An assistant professor and Altman Scholar at Miami University, she lives in Oxford, Ohio with her family.