Beth Nugent writes, teaches, and is a professional animal rescuer. A graduate of Connecticut College and the University of Iowa (M.F.A.), Nugent wrote the novel Live Girls, whose protagonist Catherine goes back and forth from a theatre, a diner, and the rooming house where she lives; and the short story collection City of Boys.

Nugent is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she teaches popular classes on longform narrative, among other topics, and advises students in every medium from fiction to performance to film.