Short Author Bio

Amelia Franz is the author of The Longest Man-Made Beach in the World: Biloxi Stories (Watertower Press, 2026). Her fiction and non-fiction have been published in Image Journal, Reckon Review, Hippocampus, Prime Number Magazine, among other journals, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best American Mystery and Suspense. She is an educator who most recently taught for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. She lives in the Baltimore area with her husband and three children, where she is an active member of the Hampden Writing Group and an editor of The Avenue Journal.

Longer Author Bio

Amelia Franz is the author of The Longest Man-Made Beach in the World: Biloxi Stories, a short fiction collection set in the Mississippi Gulf Coast city of Biloxi, where she lived as a child. As the daughter of a pastor, she and her family moved several times around the state, from the delta to the coast, which gave her an appreciation of Mississippi’s profound regional differences. She graduated from Pascagoula High, then the University of South Alabama, and finally, Texas A&M University, where she received a Master of Arts in English with a concentration in creative writing. Her stories and essays have been published in various magazines and journals, including Image Journal, Reckon Review, Prime Number Magazine, and Hippocampus, among others. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best American Mystery and Suspense. 

Although she has now lived in five states, Amelia’s writing has always been rooted in the unique language, culture, and people of Mississippi, her native state. Recently, however, her muse has led her imagination farther west. She is currently at work on a novel set in 19th century Galveston, Texas—a regional hotbed of mediums, seances, and spiritualism in the wake of the American Civil War. Her intellectual interests include religious history and the intersection of faith and art. 

She has worked as a secondary language arts teacher, freelance web designer and copywriter, and online writing instructor for academically advanced teens. She currently lives in the Baltimore area with her husband and three children, where she is an active member of the Hampden Writing Group and an editor of The Avenue Journal.