Alan Cheuse

Alan Cheuse in 2007.

Alan Cheuse (born January 23, 1940, Perth Amboy, New Jersey) is an American writer and critic. He graduated from Perth Amboy High School in 1957 and Rutgers University in 1961. After traveling abroad and working for several years at various writing and editing jobs, he returned to Rutgers to study for a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, which he was awarded in 1974 (having written a thesis on the life and work of the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier). He then taught literature at Bennington College for nearly a decade and then took various posts at The University of the South, the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at George Mason University.

It was in the late 1970s that he began publishing short fiction, beginning with a story in The New Yorker and going on to write for magazines such as Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, and New Letters. He brought out his first novel, a biographical historical work about John Reed and Louise Bryant, in 1982, and a number of other works of fiction and nonfiction followed.

He is a regular book reviewer for the NPR radio program All Things Considered.

Bibliography

• Candace and Other Stories (short story collection, 1980)
• The Bohemians (novel, 1982)
• The Grandmothers' Club (novel, 1986)
• Fall Out of Heaven (memoir, 1987)
• The Light Possessed (novel, 1990)
• The Tennessee Waltz and Other Stories (short story collection, 1994)
• Lost and Old Rivers: Stories (short story collection, 1998)
• Listening to the Page: Adventures in Reading and Writing (essays, 2001)
• The Fires (novellas, 2007)

 "To Catch the Lightning" (novel, forthcoming, Oct.2008)

Bibliography as editor

• Writing Workshop in a Book: The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction (2007, co-edited with Lisa Alvarez)
• Seeing Ourselves: Great Early American Short Stories, Edited (2007)

Selected Short Fiction

• "Days Given Over to Travel," Prairie Schooner, Summer, 2003
• "Revels," Southern California Anthology, Summer, 2004
• "Paradise, Or, Eat Your Face," (novella), The Idaho Review, Winter, 2004
• "Horse Sacrifice and the Shaman's Ascent to the Sky," The Land-Grant College Review, Winter, 2005
• "Thirty-Five Passages Over Water," The Antioch Review, Fall, 2006
• "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941," New Letters, Fall, 2006
• "In the Kauri Forest," Ploughshares, Fall, 2006
• "Gribnis," Prairie Schooner, Winter, 2006

"A Little Death", The Southern Review, Summer, 2007

External links

• Alan Cheuse's official website
• George Mason profile
• Littoral interview with Alan Cheuse about his novel To Catch the Lightning, (2008)
• Tennessee Writers Project biography
• Alan Cheuse bio at NPR
• Santa Fe Writers Project, publisher of The Fires