Virgie Townsend (she/they) is the author of the fiction chapbook Because We Were Christian Girls (Black Lawrence Press, October 2022). Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Harper’s Bazaar, VICE, and other publications.
Because We Were Christian Girls won the 2022 Central New York Book Award for Fiction and was previously shortlisted for the 2021 Newfound Prose Prize, the Cupboard Pamphlet’s 2020 Annual Contest, and Black Lawrence Press’ Fall 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition.
Virgie’s short stories have been published in The Sun Magazine, Tin House Online, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pif Magazine, Jellyfish Review, and elsewhere. Her fiction has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction, as well as featured in several publications’ best-of anthologies. She also served as an editor at SmokeLong Quarterly and taught flash fiction writing at American University.
As a journalist and essayist, Virgie has written about the opioid epidemic’s impact on children, white supremacy, the enslavement of the Yazidi peoples by ISIS, childhood trauma, and the rise in deaths due to antibiotic resistance, among other topics.
Virgie lives in Syracuse with her family. She is currently working on a novel.