Serena Burman is a (mostly) nonfiction writer living on a small island in the Pacific Northwest.

She’s always secretly known she wouldn’t find her life’s work until her mid-30s, but she only admits it because she’s 38 now, and a writer. In the halted world of 2020, she climbed out of a significant depression and began writing personal narrative essays.

Her work appears in The Bluebird Word, Roxane Gay’s Emerging Writer Series in The Audacity, Pithead Chapel and Invisible City. Her recent essay, “Take Care,” was a finalist for the 58th New Millennium Award. In 2024 she was awarded a Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet & Author Fellowship and was a finalist for the Tusculum Review Chapbook Prize. In 2023, she received Honorable Mention for the New Millennium Award and was shortlisted for the Lascaux Review Prize. She’s currently working on a collection of essays attempting to hack sex & love.

She loves puzzles, Trader Johann’s Virtuoso Lip Balm (RIP), and the sun.