PAIGE TOWERS is a creative and freelance writer who earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Emerson College. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, McSweeney's, The Harvard Review, Seneca Review, North American Review, Indiana Review, Cream City Review, The Baltimore Review, Midwestern Gothic, The Billfold, Bustle, Hyperallergic, and many other publications.
Her second book, GOOD WHITE CHRISTIAN FAMILY, is forthcoming from University of Iowa Press in Spring 2025. The book is a work of literary journalism investigating Bertha and Harry Holt, an evangelical couple who adopted eight children after the Korean War, told through the lens of a familicide that happened in Iowa City, while also examining the white saviorism and neocolonialism that still drive the intercountry adoption industry today.
Paige is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and has received generous support from Bread Loaf, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her first book, The Sound of Undoing, won the 2024 Wisconsin Library Association Literary Award and the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award (academic category). She was also selected as a featured writer for Franklin & Marshall College's 2023 Emerging Writers Festival, a finalist for the 2021 New South Prose Contest, as judged by E.J. Koh, and a finalist for The Master's Review 2022 Chapbook Open, as judged by Kim Fu. Paige made the Notable Essays list in Best American Essays 2020 and, furthermore, she's a Pushcart Prize nominee, the former Associate Editor of Woolly, a former staff writer for Van Winkle's, and the former Senior Editor of TRUE. She was anthologized in Belt Publishing's City Anthology Series (Milwaukee), featured in a video from Refinery29 on ASMR, and selected by Adrian Chen to give a talk for the IRL Club on the same subject. In 2020, Paige also shared her experience with noise pollution and mental health on an episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz — a sound-themed podcast in partnership with TED.
Paige has lived in Iowa City, London, Seoul, Denver, Boston, New York City, and Milwaukee, but now resides in Bellingham, Washington.