Dr. Abigail Favale graduated from George Fox University with a philosophy degree in 2005, and went on to complete her doctorate at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she was a recipient of the competitive Overseas Research Award. In 2011, her dissertation was granted the Samuel Rutherford Prize for the most distinguished thesis in English literature. 

She is an active writer in multiple genres. Her literary criticism has appeared in various academic journals and essay collections. In 2017, she was awarded the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction. A lifelong Christian, Favale entered the Catholic Church in 2014, and her memoir about this transition, Into the Deep, is forthcoming from Cascade Books.

Her first book, Irigaray, Incarnation and Contemporary Women’s Fiction(Bloomsbury 2013), examines religious themes in the work of contemporary women novelists. This book was awarded the 2014 Feminist and Women's Studies Association Book Prize.