Stephanie Anderson's debut nonfiction book, One Size Fits None: A Farm Girl's Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture, was released in January 2019 with University of Nebraska Press. The book won a 2019 Midwest Book Award (Nature) and a 2020 Nautilus Book Award (Green Living and Sustainability; silver), and it was one of three finalists for the 2020 High Plains Book Award in Nonfiction. Stephanie is the winner of the 2020 Margolis Award for nonfiction writers of social justice journalism and a 2021 Nonfiction Award from the Barbara Deming Money for Women Fund. Her second book on regenerative agriculture, From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture, is forthcoming with The New Press in November 2024.
Stephanie's essays and short stories have appeared in The Rumpus, TriQuarterly, Flyway, The Pinch, Hotel Amerika, Midwestern Gothic, The Chronicle Review, Sweet, and many others. Her essays were included on the notable lists in Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Presses (2022 and 2023), The Best American Essays 2020 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2020. Her essay "Disturbance" won the 2022 Ninth Letter/Illinois Regenerative Agriculture Initiative Regeneration Literary Contest.
She also contributed to the essay collection Permanent Vacation: Eighteen Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, Vol. 2 from Bona Fide Books. Her essay "Greyhound" won the 2016 Payton James Freeman Essay Prize from The Rumpus, Drake University, and the Freeman family. Her short story "The Wickedest Thing They Ever Saw" was a finalist for the 2014 Devil's Lake Annual Driftless Prize in Fiction.
Stephanie holds an MFA in creative nonfiction (2015) from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL, and a bachelor’s degree in English (2009) from Augustana University in Sioux Falls, SD. She serves as Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction in FAU's English Department beginning fall 2024. She has also taught workshops in fiction, poetry, and memoir at FAU's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Stephanie is co-editor of University of Nebraska Press' Our Regenerative Future book series.
In the past, Stephanie has worked as a writer and photographer for the humanitarian aid organization Cross International, traveling to developing countries to gather personal stories from aid recipients. She also served as special sections editor for Tri-State Neighbor, an agricultural newspaper in South Dakota.
Stephanie works primarily in literary journalism, narrative nonfiction, and literary fiction. Having grown up on her family's ranch in South Dakota, she often focuses on rural life, agriculture, food, the environment, personal relationships, and animals in her writing. Stephanie resides in South Florida with her husband, Ryan, and Italian greyhound Augie.
