Alayna Becker is a writer, comedian, and teacher based in Iowa City, Iowa. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Shenandoah, The Harvard Advocate, X-R-A-Y, Autostraddle, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2026 Prairie Lights Nonfiction Prize and a Herodotus Research Award. A longtime stand-up comedian and the managing editor of Moss Lit, she is currently pursuing an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.