Lannan Foundation

George Saunders has published two collections of stories, Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, and a children's story, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip. Of his propensity to use theme parks in many of his stories he says, "Basically, using theme parks creates a sort of cartoon-like mood, and that keeps me from trying to launch into some earnest, twenty-page description of some character's childhood." His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Story, and many other publications. He won the National Magazine Award in 1994 for his story The 400-pound CEO and again in 1996 for the story Bounty. He has explored for oil in Sumatra, played guitar in a Texas bar band, and worked in a slaughterhouse. Saunders, whom the Atlantic Monthly says "may be the most talented goof-off writing fiction today," currently teaches at Syracuse University.

George Saunders Bio and Cross Links

Michael Silverblatt, a New York native, studied at Johns Hopkins University, where he came under the influence of such cutting-edge author-teachers as Donald Barthelme and John Barth. Dubbed "the best reader in America" by Norman Mailer, he is the host of the literary talk show Bookworm, which he created in 1989 for KCRW 89.9 FM in Santa Monica. He has participated in numerous Readings & Conversations programs, interviewing Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Salman Rushdie, and A.S. Byatt, among others. Bookworm airs locally on KSFR 101.1FM every Sunday at 1:30pm.

Michael Silverblatt Bio and Cross Links