Ron Carlson

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Ron Carlson is an American novelist and writer of short stories.

Carlson was born in Logan, Utah, but grew up in Salt Lake City. He earned a masters degree in English from the University of Utah. He then taught at The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut where he started his first novel.

He became a professor of English at Arizona State University in 1985, teaching creative writing to undergraduates and graduates, and ultimately becoming director of its Creative Writing Program.

Carlson currently teaches at the University of California, Irvine.

[edit] Bibliography

Ron Carlson has written four novels to date:

  • Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1977)
  • Truants (1981)
  • The Speed of Light (2003)
  • Five Skies (2007)

He has penned four extremely well-regarded collections of short stories:

  • Plan B for the Middle Class (1992; a New York Times Best Book that year)
  • The Hotel Eden (1997; an NYT Notable Book)
  • At the Jim Bridger (2002; a Los Angeles Times 2002 best book
  • A Kind of Flying (2003) is a compilation of selected stories from his first three collections.

He has also written a book about writing:

  • Ron Carlson Writes a Story (2007), subtitled: "From the first glimmer of an idea to the final sentence."

His short stories originally appeared in many of the best-known magazines, such as The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, Gentlemen's Quarterly, and Playboy. They have also appeared in various anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, Sudden Fiction, Best of the West Epoch, In Our Lovely Deseret: Mormon Fictions, The North American Review, The O'Henry Prize Series, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.

In addition to his fiction, Carlson's writing has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He has also received a number of honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, a National Society of Arts and Letters Literature Award, and the 1993 Ploughshares Cohen Prize.

About his first "good" story, he wrote: "I did not understand my story; many times you don’t. It’s not your job to understand or evaluate or edit your work when you first emerge from it. Your duty is to be in love with it, and that defies explanation."[citation needed]

[edit] External links