Cadwell Turnbull is the author of the debut novel The Lesson. He is a graduate from the North Carolina State University's Creative Writing MFA in Fiction and English MA in Linguistics. Turnbull is also a graduate of Clarion West 2016. His short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and Asimov's Science Fiction. His Nightmare story ''Loneliness is in Your Blood'' was selected for the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018. His Lightspeed story ''Jump'' was selected for The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 and was featured on LeVar Burton Reads. For his work on The Lesson, Turnbull has been long-listed for the 2020 VCU Cabell's First Novelist Award and nominated for the 2020 AAMBC Sci-fi Fantasy Author of the Year.