John Dufresne (Fiction) grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he wasted his youth playing baseball and going to movies. He attended Worcester State College and spent seven years as a social worker before attending the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Arkansas. Dufresne is the author of the story collections The Way That Water Enters Stone (1991) and Johnny Too Bad (2006). His novel Louisiana Power & Light (1994) was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. It was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, as was his second novel, Love Warps the Mind a Little (1997). In describing Deep in the Shade of Paradise (2002), Publishers Weekly wrote, "Imagining John Irving, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor or Max Shulman (or all of the above at once) on peyote juice only begins to evoke the dimension and energy of the seriocomic fantasies of Dufresne at his freewheeling, frenetic best." In July 2008, W.W. Norton, Dufresne's longtime publisher, will release his most recent novel, Requiem, Mass. In addition to his works of fiction, he has a book on fiction writing titled The Lie That Tells a Truth. Carl Hiassen chose Dufresne's story "The Timing of Unfelt Smiles" for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2007. In April 2008, Grand Valley Productions filmed To Live and Die in Dixie, based on a screenplay Dufresne co-wrote with Donald Papy. Since 1989 he has been teaching in the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University (http://w3.fiu.edu/crwriting/). He lives in Dania Beach, Florida, with his wife and son. For more information on John Dufresne, visit www.johndufresne.com.
John Dufresne (Fiction) grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he wasted his youth playing baseball and going to movies. He attended Worcester State College and spent seven years as a social worker before attending the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Arkansas. Dufresne is the author of the story collections The Way That Water Enters Stone (1991) and Johnny Too Bad (2006). His novel Louisiana Power & Light (1994) was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. It was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, as was his second novel, Love Warps the Mind a Little (1997). In describing Deep in the Shade of Paradise (2002), Publishers Weekly wrote, "Imagining John Irving, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor or Max Shulman (or all of the above at once) on peyote juice only begins to evoke the dimension and energy of the seriocomic fantasies of Dufresne at his freewheeling, frenetic best." In July 2008, W.W. Norton, Dufresne's longtime publisher, will release his most recent novel, Requiem, Mass. In addition to his works of fiction, he has a book on fiction writing titled The Lie That Tells a Truth. Carl Hiassen chose Dufresne's story "The Timing of Unfelt Smiles" for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2007. In April 2008, Grand Valley Productions filmed To Live and Die in Dixie, based on a screenplay Dufresne co-wrote with Donald Papy. Since 1989 he has been teaching in the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University (