Professor
MFA, San Francisco State University
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- Contemporary Fiction Writing
Recent Upper Division & Graduate Courses Taught
- Craft and Forms of Fiction
- Fiction Writing
- Advanced Fiction Writing
- Seminar in Creative Non-Fiction Writing
- Seminar in Fiction Writing
- Studies in Fiction Writing
Selected Fiction Publications
Books:
The Suicide Club, University of Georgia Press (2015).
Waiting for Elvis, Leapfrog Press (2005).
The Daiquiri Girls, University of Massachusetts Press (1998).
Fiction in Journals:
"Sinkhole," Chicago Quarterly Review #27, Fall, 2018.
"FUBAR," The Meadow, Summer 2015.
"Belvedere," Hotel Amerika, Vol. 13, Winter 2015.
"Burglar,"Passages North #34, Winter 2013.
"Ash," Southern Humanities Review #46/3, Summer, 2012, nominated for Pushcart Prize.
"The Suicide Club," Jabberwock Review, Winter, 2012.
"Drop Zone," Arroyo Literary Review #3, Spring 2011.
"Hope Springs," Epiphany, Fall, 2010/Winter 2011
"God's Playground,"Confrontation #98/99 (Spring/Summer 2007).
"Heaven's Gate,"The Fiddlehead #222 (Canada).
"Hearts of an Eel," Meridian, #9 (Spring, 2002).
"Eyes of Glass,"Beloit Fiction Journal, Volume 15 (Spring, 2002).
"Ultrasaurus," Other Voices #35 (Winter, 2001).
Other stories have appeared in: Writers' Forum, Santa Clara Review, Chiron Review, Worcester Review, The Bridge, Mississippi Review, Mississippi Mud, Green Mountains Review, Ascent, American Fiction, Five Fingers Review, The Nob Hill Gazette, The Short Story Review, and Fourteen Hills, and others.
Fiction in Anthologies:
"The Suicide Club," The Slow Release: Stories about Death from The Flannery O'Connor Awards, University of Georgia Press, 2019.
Selected Nonfiction in Journals:
"The Falling Man," The Truth About the Fact, Vol. VIII, #1, Spring, 2013.
"The Elvis Generation," The Pinch, 22.2 (Summer, 2002).
Honors & Offices
- 2016 Regents Distinguished Teaching Award
- 2014 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction for The Suicide Club
- 2006 John Gardner Book Award for Waiting for Elvis
- Grace Paley Short Fiction Award from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), for The Daiquiri Girls (1998)
- Cimarron Review Editor-in-Chief and Editor of Fiction