Laura Fernandes Laffrado

Dr. Laura Fernandes Laffrado is a Professor of English at Western Washington University, affiliated with the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research focuses on early American literatures, 19th-century American literatures, autobiography, and biography. She has published widely in journals such as *a/b: Auto/Biography Studies*, *ESQ*, and *Nathaniel Hawthorne Review*, and authored books including *Uncommon Women: Gender and Representation in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women’s Writing* and *Selected Writings of Ella Higginson: Inventing Pacific Northwest Literature*, which won the 2018 Society for the Study of American Women Writers Edition Award. Her current work includes a biography of Pacific Northwest writer Ella Rhoads Higginson.