Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction

Delighted to announce that my short story collection, Hibernate, won the 2013 Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction!  

Hibernate: Stories will be published by OSU Press in 2014.

About the book:

In this collection of stories -- winner of the 2013 Ohio State University Prize for Short Fiction and finalist for the 2011 Flannery O'Connor Award in Short Fiction -- characters slowly wake to hard choices. A Sudanese immigrant tries to start a life with his girlfriend in the United States, only to find himself pulled toward his mother's past. A group of American tourists visits an Indian Pueblo and realizes their tour guide isn't at all who they expected. Their ship moored on the ice, a captain and his men cling to the company of narwhals and Eskimos. Published separately in numerous literary journals, these stories form a dazzling landscape of the strange and joyful.

Writers on the River in May

I'm so excited to be giving the first ever workshop for Writers on the River in Corvallis, Oregon!  It's already sold out, but if you're interested in attending, contact these great people and get your name on the waiting list.

To read more about the workshop, click here.

On May 20th, the Monday before the workshop, I'll be giving a presentation, "The Story and the Question," which is open to the public:

In my workshop on the 25^th, I’ll be talking about where and how to end a story or novel, so it only seems right that I first speak a little about beginnings. When you sit down to write, where do you begin? With character? Voice? Plot? Setting?

How much do you need to know – if anything – before you start committing those words to paper? Should you have a theme? Adopt (or already know?!) a particular style? Can you figure out some of this stuff along the way?

I’m going to argue that you begin with a question that you know you’ll never be able to answer. A question that means enough to you that you’re willing to fumble towards it for 350 pages. Nabokov has a fancypants description for this: “the subliminal coordinates with which to focus the plot.” Jim Shepard calls it “the question to which the novel keeps obsessively returning.” Call it whatever you want, but this is the question you are writing the book to figure out. The question is the eternal engine. Once you know your question, you are ready to begin.

This presentation will last roughly one hour and will move fluidly between an informal lecture and audience Q & A. We will likely look at several examples of these novel-generating questions and consider possibilities for our own. 

Presentation: The Story and The Question: May 20, 2013 6:30-8pm

Dennis Hall at First Presbyterian Church, 114 SW 8th St.

Corvallis, OR

Workshop: May 25, 2013  Meet @ 9:45am for all day workshop

Imagine Coffee House (Community Room) 5460 SW Philomath Blvd.

Corvallis, OR