Carmen Maria Machado is an acclaimed American short story author, essayist, and critic, best known for her works Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House. Born on July 3, 1986, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Machado's literary contributions have been featured in prestigious publications such as The New Yorker, Granta, and Lightspeed.

Her debut collection, Her Body and Other Parties, published in 2017, was a finalist for several awards including the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize. It also won the Bard Fiction Prize, the John Leonard Prize, and the Crawford Award among others. In 2018, it was recognized by the New York Times as one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."

Machado's memoir, In the Dream House, published in 2019, won the 2021 Folio Prize. Her work is often reprinted in collections such as Year's Best Weird Fiction, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Best Women's Erotica. She has also been a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette.