01.22.06: BRIAN BOULDREY

Brian Bouldrey's past has followed a path so indirect that the adjective "checkered" would attribute to it an unearned understatement. He directs the English Major in Writing at Northwestern University and teaches baffling seminars in fiction and essay to puzzled undergraduates. He is also a member of the faculty for Antioch University at Los Angeles' MFA Program for Writers.

Bouldrey is the author of Monster, a collection of personal essays (Alison) and three novels, The Genius of Desire (Ballantine), Love, the Magician (Haworth), and The Boom Economy (University of Wisconsin Press). He is also editor of Writing Home: Literature of the New West (Heyday), Traveling Souls (Whereabouts), Wrestling with the Angel (Riverhead) and the Best American Gay Fiction series (Little, Brown). His new book, Honorable Bandit: A Walk Across Corsica, will be published in Fall 2006 by the University of Wisconsin Press.

He has served for seven years as the Associate Editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian's "Lit" Supplement, and is a frequent contributor to that weekly, as well as the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. A recipient of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Western Regional Magazine Award.

His dog Thurber forgives him every day, although much of that forgiveness goes unearned..

Listen to Brian Bouldrey on The Lit Show (RealMedia Streaming)