The Cheryl J. Family fiction program
October 6, 2009: J.C. Hallman
J.C. Hallman's studied creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Iowa, and Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of two books of nonfiction, The Chess Artist (2003, Thomas Dunne Books) and The Devil is a Gentleman (2006, Random House), and a story collection, The Hospital for Bad Poets (2009, Milkweed Editions). An anthology to appear in September, The Story about the Story, evolved from a course Hallman taught at Penn in 2004-05. Another book of nonfiction, In Eutopia, will appear in 2010. Hallman has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, St. Joseph's University, Sweet Briar College, and the University of St. Thomas.
October 23, 2008: Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain's fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Zoetrope-All Story, and he has been awarded an O. Henry Prize and two Pushcart Prizes. His collection of short stories Brief Encounters With Che Guevara was awarded the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished first book of fiction. He lives with his wife and their two children in Dallas, Texas.
February 26, 2008: Adrian Khactu & Samuel Delany
Samuel R. Delany is a critic and novelist, with essays and interviews collected in seven volumes, the most recent three of which are Silent Interviews (1994), Longer Views (1996) and Shorter Views (1999). His award winning autobiography The Motion of Light in Water (1988) and his novel Hogg (1995) were returned to print in 2004. His novel Phallos was reviewed in the Village Voice as "a lapidary, digital-age Pale Fire, tonally redolent of Valery's Epilinos." His other fictions include The Mad Man (1995), and Atlantis: Three Tales (1993). A multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, Mr. Delany is also a recipient of the Pilgrim Award for outstanding scholarship in science fiction studies, and a winner of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to Lesbian and Gay Literature. His scholarly interests include Walter Pater and the Oxford aesthetic movement and its influence on high modernism, as well as questions of race, gender, queer studies, and literary theory. After eleven years as a comparative literature professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a year and a half as an English professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Mr. Delany began as a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University in January 2001.
Adrian Khactu's work has been published or is forthcoming in the Atlantic Monthly, Carve, Heritage, and In/Vision (or HOOT! as those in the know pronounce it). He has won the Richard Moyer Prize in Fiction and the Ezra Pound Prize in Literary Translation, as well as fellowships from Clarion West and Vermont Studio Center. Adrian currently lives, studies, and works in Philadelphia, and he holds shiny, though not entirely profitable, creative writing degrees from Stanford and Temple Universities (where he was a student of Samuel Delany).
