Grant Faulkner

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Grant Faulkner is an American writer, the former executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the co-founder of the online literary journal 100 Word Story , the co-host of the podcast Write-minded, [1] and an Executive Producer of America's Next Great Author. [2]

Contents

Grant Faulkner
OccupationFiction writer, essayist, co-founder of 100 Word Story
NationalityAmerican
Education Grinnell College (BA)
San Francisco State University (MA)
Notable workFissures
Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo
All the Comfort Sin Can Provide
SpouseHeather Mackey
Children2

Biography

Grant Faulkner was born and raised in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He earned a B.A. in English from Grinnell College and an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University. [3] He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, the writer Heather Mackey, and their two children. [4]

In 2011, Faulkner and Lynn Mundell co-founded 100 Word Story, an online literary journal that publishes stories that are exactly 100 words long. [5] Stories published in 100 Word Story have been included on Wigleaf’s Top (Very) Short Fictions list [6] and anthologized in the annual Best Small Fictions series and W.W Norton's New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction. [7]

From 2012 to 2023, he was executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), taking over from founder Chris Baty. [8] [9] In an interview, he claimed that nearly 500,000 people, including 100,000 kids and teens participated in the event every year. [10] He left to focus on developing the TV show, America's Next Great Author, [11] as an Executive Producer. [11]

In 2014, Faulkner co-founded the Flash Fiction Collective, a reading series in San Francisco, with writers Jane Ciabattari and Meg Pokrass. Kristen Chen joined the trio in 2015.

In 2018, Faulkner launched the podcast "Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers" with co-host Brooke Warner of SheWrites.com.

Additionally, Faulkner serves on the National Writing Project's Writer's Council, [12] Left Margin Lit's Advisory Council, [13] Aspen Words' Creative Council, [14] and the LitNet Steering Committee. [15]

Literary work

Faulkner’s stories and essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times , Poets & Writers , Writer’s Digest , Lit Hub, Tin House, The Southwest Review , The Gettysburg Review , Five Points, Green Mountains Review , and Puerto del Sol . His stories have also been anthologized in W.W. Norton’s New Micro: Especially Short Fiction, Best Small Fictions 2016, and Bloomsbury’s Short-Form Creative Writing, among others.

In 2015, Faulkner released Fissures, a collection of one hundred 100-word stories, published by Press 53.

One reviewer wrote, “In Grant Faulkner’s collection of very short fiction, Fissures [One Hundred 100-Word Stories], Faulkner manages to elevate his language, presenting each word here with the rhetorical weight of a novel and with a poetic aptitude that is anything but self-indulgent. Faulkner has, instead, carefully crafted these stories, and each word comes at the reader as high currency.” [16]

The 100-word story form is often likened to prose poetry, [17] which is one thing that drew Faulkner to the form. “I’ve always liked forms that blur,” he said. “To say that a piece of writing is a prose poem versus a story is just a matter of an author’s intention, an author’s definition.” [18] In 2018, he co-edited a collection of the best stories published in 100 Word Story, Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story with Lynn Mundell and Beret Olsen.

Faulkner is also known for his writings on the creative process. In 2017, Faulkner published Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo. In 2019, he co-authored Brave the Page, a teen writing guide. His book on flash fiction, The Art of Brevity was published in 2023 by the University of New Mexico Press.

Faulkner regularly presents at conferences, including the Frankfurt Book Fair, Book Expo America, the Bay Area Book Festival, the Oakland Book Festival, Litquake, the Writer’s Digest Conference, and the San Francisco Writers Conference, among others. [9]

List of works

Books

Selected short stories

Essays

Selected interviews

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Novel Writing Month</span> US nonprofit organization

National Novel Writing Month, often shortened to NaNoWriMo, is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that promotes creative writing around the world. Its flagship program is an annual, international creative writing event in which participants attempt to write a 50,000-word manuscript during the month of November. Well-known authors write "pep-talks" in order to motivate participants during the month. The website provides participants, called "Wrimos", with tips for writer's block, information on where local participants are meeting, and an online community of support. Focusing on the length of a work rather than the quality, writers are encouraged to finish their first draft quickly so it can be edited later at their discretion. The project started in July 1999 with 21 participants. In 2022, 413,295 people participated in the organization's programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flash fiction</span> Style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity

Flash fiction is a brief fictional narrative that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story; the 280-character story ; the "dribble" ; the "drabble" ; "sudden fiction" ; "flash fiction" ; and "microstory".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tobias Wolff</span> American author (born 1945)

Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American short story writer, memoirist, novelist, and teacher of creative writing. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life (1989) and In Pharaoh's Army (1994). He has written four short story collections and two novels including The Barracks Thief (1984), which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Wolff received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drabble</span> Short work of fiction in exactly 100 words

A drabble is a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Holland Rogers</span> American novelist

Bruce Holland Rogers is an American author of short fiction who also writes under the pseudonym Hanovi Braddock. His stories have won a Pushcart Prize, two Nebula Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, two World Fantasy Awards, the Micro Award, and have been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and Spain's Premio Ignotus.

Dinty W. Moore is an American essayist and writer of both fiction and non-fiction books. He received the Grub Street National Book Prize for Non-Fiction for his memoir, Between Panic and Desire, in 2008 and is also author of the memoir To Hell With It: Of Sin and Sex, Chicken Wings, and Dante’s Entirely Ridiculous, Needlessly Guilt-Inducing Inferno, the writing guides The Story Cure,Crafting the Personal Essay, and The Mindful Writer, and many other books and edited anthologies.

John Warner is an American writer, editor, and teacher of writing. He is the author of seven books and the editor of McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He is a frequent contributor to The Morning News and has been anthologized in May Contain Nuts,Stumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction, and The Future Dictionary of America. He frequently collaborates with writer Kevin Guilfoile. Warner's most debut novel was The Funny Man. The book has been reviewed by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. His most recent work is the short story collection A Tough Day for the Army edited by Michael Griffith and published by the LSU Press series, Yellow Shoe Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Chee</span> American writer

Alexander Chee is an American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yiyun Li</span> Chinese writer and professor

Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.

Word Riot was an American online magazine that published poetry, flash fiction, short stories, novel excerpts, creative nonfiction, reviews, and interviews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deb Olin Unferth</span> American novelist

Deb Olin Unferth is an American short story writer, novelist, and memoirist. She is the author of the collection of stories Minor Robberies, the novel Vacation, both published by McSweeney's, and the memoir, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, published by Henry Holt. Unferth was a finalist for a 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir, Revolution.

The Southern Cross Novel Challenge, or SoCNoC, was a yearly event held every June from 2007 - 2013. The southern hemisphere's version of National Novel Writing Month, June was selected as the month for this challenge because it is considered the equivalent of the northern hemisphere's November in terms of weather and temperatures. This challenge is hosted by Kiwi Writers, a New Zealand-based writing group which housed members primarily based in New Zealand and Australia but stretched as far as the United States and Canada. SoCNoC was the largest writing competition in the Southern Hemisphere.

National Poetry Writing Month is a creative writing project held annually in April in which participants attempt to write a poem each day for one month. NaPoWriMo coincides with the National Poetry Month in the United States of America and Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Robison (author)</span> American novelist

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Dixon Hearne is an American educator and writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He has published an education text, four short story collections: Delta Flats: Stories in the Key of Blues and Hope; Plantatia: High-toned and Lowdown Stories of the South; Native Voices, Native Lands; and When Christmas was Real, and edited several anthologies. His novella, From Tickfaw to Shongaloo is forthcoming from Southeast Missouri State University Press. It was previously named the sole runner-up in the international creative writing competition sponsored by the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society in New Orleans. The contest was judged by Moira Crone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archana Sarat</span> Indian author

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Rahul Mehta is an American author. They were born and raised in West Virginia, and their work focuses on the experience of being queer and South Asian. Mehta is the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Debut Gay Fiction and the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction for their short story collection Quarantine (2011). They teach Creative Writing at the University of the Arts.

100 Word Story is a literary magazine that was founded in 2011 by writers Grant Faulkner and Lynn Mundell in Berkeley, California. It publishes stories and essays that are exactly 100 words in length ; each piece is published with an accompanying photo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jasmine Guillory</span> American romance novelist

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References

  1. "Write-minded Podcast". Write-minded Podcast.
  2. O’Sullivan, Joanne. "'America's Next Great Author' Competition Films Pilot". PublishersWeekly.com.
  3. "One Month, 50,000 Words - SF State Magazine Spring/Summer 2013". Archived from the original on 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2015-06-29.
  4. "Creating a New Generation of Hemingways. Novelist Grant Faulkner '87 inspires would-be novelists during NaNoWriMo" (PDF). The Grinnell Magazine. 46 (1): 32. ISSN   1539-0950.
  5. ""We'll Always Publish a Good Story." A Chat With Grant Faulkner, Editor of 100 Word Story - The Review Review". www.thereviewreview.net. Archived from the original on 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2015-06-29.
  6. "The Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions of 2015". wigleaf.com.
  7. http://queensferrypress.com/blog/tag/the-best-small-fictions/
  8. "An interview with Grant Faulkner, OLL's new Executive Director!". National Novel Writing Month.
  9. 1 2 "Bio". grantfaulkner.com. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  10. "Grant Faulkner: A Modern Day Pioneer Inspiring Creativity Through Writing". 2 November 2014.
  11. 1 2 "America's Next Great Author | Reality show for writers". americasnextgreatauthor.com.
  12. "Writers Council". National Writing Project.
  13. "Left Margin LIT: Creative Writing in Berkeley". leftmarginlit.
  14. "About Us Aspen Words".
  15. https://litnet.org/about/
  16. "Microfiction at Work: A Review of Fissures by Grant Faulkner - Atticus Review". 1 June 2015.
  17. "Is It Prose Poetry, Short Prose, Or Flash Fiction? - Writer's Relief, Inc". 18 July 2013.
  18. "An Interview with Grant Faulkner | s [r] blog". Archived from the original on 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2015-06-29.