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Kevin John Brockmeier
Born (1972-12-06) December 6, 1972 (age 52)
Hialeah, Florida, U.S.
OccupationAuthor
EducationParkview Arts and Science Magnet High School
Southwest Missouri State University
Iowa Writers' Workshop (MFA)
Notable worksThings That Fall from the Sky
The View From The Seventh Layer
The Brief History of the Dead

Kevin John Brockmeier (born December 6, 1972)[1] is an American writer of fantasy and literary fiction. His best known work is The Brief History of the Dead, 2006.

Life and career

Brockmeier was born in Hialeah, Florida and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas.[2] He is a graduate of Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School (1991) and Southwest Missouri State University (1995). He taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received his MFA in 1997, and lives in Little Rock.

His short stories have been printed in numerous publications and he has published two collections of stories, two children's novels, and two fantasy novels.

Brockmeier has won three O. Henry Prizes, the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction, Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, the Booker Worthen Literary Prize, and the Porter Fund Literary Prize.[3]

Published works

Story collections

Novels

  • The Truth About Celia (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003, ISBN 0-375-42135-1)
  • The Brief History of the Dead (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006, ISBN 0-375-42369-9)
  • The Illumination (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011, ISBN 0-375-42531-4)
  • A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade (New York: Pantheon Books, 2014, ISBN 0-307-90898-4)

For younger readers

  • City of Names (Viking, 2002)
  • Grooves: A Kind of Mystery (New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2006, ISBN 0-06-073691-7)

Miscellaneous stories

  • "The Brief History of the Dead" (published in The New Yorker September 8, 2003; used as the first chapter of the novel by the same name)

For more information on individual stories, see Things That Fall from the Sky

Anthologies as Editor

  • Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3, edited by Kevin Brockmeier (Portland, Underland Press, scheduled January 2010, ISBN 978-0-9802260-8-9).
Featuring stories by: Stephen King, Peter S. Beagle, Laura Kasischke, Jeffrey Ford, Lisa Goldstein, Paul Tremblay, Will Clarke, Thomas Glave, John Kessel, Kellie Wells, Ryan Boudinot, Rebecca Makkai, Martin Cozza, Chris Gavaler, Deborah Scwartzand, Shawn Vestal, and Katie Williams.[4]

Awards and honors

References

  1. ^ "Brockmeier, Kevin". Current Biography Yearbook 2010. Ipswich, MA: H.W. Wilson. 2010. pp. 67–70. ISBN 9780824211134.
  2. ^ "Granta Best of Young American Novelists 2: Kevin Brockmeier". Granta. Archived from the original on May 9, 2010. Retrieved May 17, 2010.
  3. ^ Kevin John Brockmeier, Arkansas Online
  4. ^ "Underland Press details for Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3". Archived from the original on 2009-09-07. Retrieved 2009-06-22.

Further reading