Courtney Hunter-Stangler is a Philadelphia-based writer and creative. In 2020, she self-published her debut novel, sentience, a cautionary tale about the ethics of Artificial Intelligence based on a contemporary dance performance she produced for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2017. To date, over 4500 copies have been sold.  

Sentience helped courtney gain admission to THE university of california, riverside’s low-residency mfa program in 2021, and in december 2023, she graduated with a concentration in fiction. at ucr, courtney had the privilege of working on her second book, a literary crime novel set in her hometown in philadelphia (think mare of easttown meets mystic river), with ivy pochoda and stephen graham jones.

Courtney’s writing has granted her admission to the 2022 Juniper Summer Writing Institute at THE University of Massachusetts Amherst, and it has been featured in root quarterly, dread central, the lineup, and Murder & Mayhem.

outside of creative writing, courtney works as a contract specialist writing national contracts for the department of defense. on the rare occasion she chills the hell out, she’s cuddling one of her four rescue pups or binging criminal minds with her husband.

She loves eating taco bell and watching horror movies but not at the same time.