Emerging Fiction Festival: Speakers Bios

• Heidi Julavits is the author of two novels. The Mineral Palace (Putnam,
  2001) was a Los Angeles Times Best Book and has been translated into 10 languages; The Effect of Living Backwards will be released in June 2003, also by Putnam. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, Zoetrope, McSweeney’s, Story and Best American Short Stories 1999. She is editor of the controversial new magazine The Believer, a review of books and cultural trends that’s loosely affiliated with McSweeney’s.

• Victor LaValle’s two books are a collection of stories, Slapboxing with Jesus, which was published in 2000 by Crown and won the PEN Open Book Award; and a novel, The Ecstatic (Crown, 2002), which was a finalist for this year’s PEN/Faulkner Award. His work has appeared in GQ, Tin House, and World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature. He teaches at Columbia University, and in 2003-04 will be the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College.

• Keith Morris’ first book, The Greyhound God, will be released later this year by the University of Nevada Press; the same press will bring out his collection of stories, Three or Four Hills and a Cloud, in 2004. His stories have appeared in Georgia Review, New England Review, Puerto del Sol and The Sun. He is assistant professor of English at Clemson University.

• Alix Ohlin’s first book, a novel called Under the Sun, will be brought out by Alfred Knopf in the winter of 2004; a collection of stories titled You Are Here will be published by Knopf in 2005. She was the 2000 winner of the Atlantic Monthly Student Fiction Contest and her short fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices 2003, Five Points, Shenandoah, Bellingham Review and Western Humanities Review. She is the Writer in Residence at Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island.

• Josh Russell’s first novel, Yellow Jack (W. W. Norton, 1999), was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discovery Prize. He has just completed the manuscript for his second book, Vittoria’s Map. His short fiction has appeared in Epoch, Southwest Review, New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best 1999, Black Warrior Review and Carolina Quarterly. He is assistant professor of English at Tulane University.

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