Richard Lange

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Richard Lange (born October 19, 1961 in Oakland, California) is an American writer. He is a long-time resident of the Silver Lake neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles. Lange graduated from from Morro Bay High School, on California's Central Coast, in 1979. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California film school. Following college he traveled to Europe and taught English for Berlitz in Barcelona, Spain. He then lived for a brief time in New York City. Returning to Los Angeles, he was hired as a copy editor at Larry Flynt Publications and eventually became managing editor of RIP, a heavy-metal music magazine. He later edited textbooks before becoming managing editor of Radio & Records, a radio-industry trade magazine.

Lange has published short stories in various literary journals. One, "Bank of America," was selected for Best American Mystery Stories of 2004. In January 2006, he signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown & Co. The first book, a collection of short stories titled Dead Boys, was released August 14, 2007. Stile Libero, an imprint of the Einaudi publishing house based in Rome, published the Italian translation, and Albin Michel will put out the book in France. Lange was the 2008 recipient of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Lange is currently working on a novel. Asya Muchnick, senior editor at Little, Brown & Co., is overseeing both works. Her previous titles include the best-selling The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

[edit] Recent Reviews

Eric Miles William's review in the San Francisco Chronicle, August 21, 2007 [1]

"Stylistically brilliant, painfully and truly observed and rendered, 'Dead Boys' is not just one of the best collections thus far this decade: 'Dead Boys' is one of the best short story collections of the past 50 years, right up there with Barry Hannah's 'Airships,' Chris Offutt's 'Kentucky Straight,' James Baldwin's 'Going to Meet the Man' and Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find.'"

Joshua Henkins' review in the Los Angeles Times, August 17: [2]

"The stories in 'Dead Boys' ... are all possessed of a sure tone, a wealth of telling detail and a headlong narrative energy. 'Promising' is a word bestowed on too many young writers, but in this case it's apt. 'Dead Boys' marks the emergence of a compelling new talent."

Entertainment Weekly, August 10, 2007

"'I haven't read a book in years,' reflects one of the bitter dudes in Lange's gutsy new collection. 'I stopped because no one was writing about me.' Now someone has. In these potent tales, unhappy males hang on to dismal jobs in cubicles, kill time in seedy doughnut shops, and cling to pathetic dreams of escape. The only beauty to be found in this grim volume is Lange's extraordinary craftmanship." A-.

Details Magazine, August 2007 issue:

"Lange brings Raymond Carver's minimalism to the back alley with tales of California drifters, salesmen, and bank robbers. Violence and crime are never far away, though Dead Boys focuses not on the perfect heist but on the emotional wreckage it can leave behind."

Kirkus Review's "2007 First Fiction Spotlight: Promising Debuts From Important Voices." [3]

"Superlative fiction, and an arresting debut."

[edit] Bibliography

The stories appearing in Dead Boys are listed below, along with the publications where the stories originally appeared, where applicable.

"Loss Prevention"/New Delta Review
"Telephone Bird"/The Cream City Review
"Love Lifted Me"/Cutbank
"Culver City"/Story
"The Bogo-Indian Defense"/The Southern Review
"Everything Beautiful Is Far Away"/The Sun
"Long Lost"/Mid-American Review
"Fuzzyland"/The Georgia Review
"Bank of America"/StoryQuarterly, Best American Mystery Stories 2004
"Blind-Made Products"/The Iowa Review
"The Hero Shot"
"Dead Boys"