Janna McMahan sets many of her stories in the lush hills and farmland of her native Bluegrass state and in the Lowcountry swamps, beaches and marshlands of her adopted state of South Carolina. Her short fiction has won numerous awards including the Imaginative Writing Award from the Kentucky Women Writer's Conference, the Harriette Arnow Award from the Appalachian Writers Association, the South Carolina Fiction Project and the Piccolo Spoleto Fiction Open. Her short stories have been selected for literary journals such as Wind, Limestone, Yamassee, StorySouth, Alimentum and The Nantahala Review.