Ordinary Bio: Sean Bernard directs the creative writing program at the University of La Verne in southern California, where he edits the journal Prism Review. He also serves on AWP’s Board of Directors and as Fiction Editor for Veliz Books. He holds degrees from Arizona, Oregon State, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his fiction has appeared in journals including The Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, Epoch, and Glimmer Train. He’s won grants, fellowships, and awards from groups including Oregon Literary Arts, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Poets & Writers, Jentel Artists Residency Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His debut collection Desert sonorous won the 2014 Juniper Prize, and his debut novel, Studies in the Hereafter, was published in 2015.
Way cooler bio: Other than having been sucked into ENCOM as a young man and spending years on the lightrider circuit … well, there’s more:
- Inventor of: making fatheads of friends and bringing to televised events.
- Fan, New York Mets broadcast crew.
- One day my wife and I are going to open a restaurant: Tacos Michelangelo.
- (Get it?)
- My debut novel Studies in the Hereafter is A) a meta-narrative about Triscuits, B) a velvety indictment of academia, C) the foretelling of Donald Trump or X) an entirely true story.
- Is a triscuit supposed to be a triple-biscuit? Wut. Is. Even. The. Wut.
- Rosa’s, Colori Kitchen, Sonoratown, Chongqing Special Noodles, Hilltop’s Jamaican, Chichen Itza & Holbox, Chengdu Taste, Jitlada, Tasty Noodle House, Hong Galbi (ah, crap, dead!), Zelo.
- We’ll have peach salsa and coffee-braised carnitas tacos on the menu.
- And crab tacos and oyster tacos and so many great tacos!
- (Get it??)
- I lost the county ant-fighting championship when I was seven. (To an ant.)
- California is currently possessed by a single colony of ants. All of it.
- The ants are plotting against me.
- And lettuce wrap tacos filled with uni.
- (Get it??????)
- I used to drive by Steve Kerr’s house really late at night with my friends, yelling, “Steeeeeeeve Keeeeeeeerr!”
- Today: Wild Pink Robots? Please??
- Vladimir Nabokov – yes. Glory? Pnin? Yes and yes.
- William Gass sometimes reads like some sort of bag.
- I attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and after graduating wrote a really complainy essay about it. And sort of regret it but not entirely and regret is good, isn’t it, and ambivalence, and uncertainty?
- But Iowa City, great place. Lightning bugs!
- Sometimes I write long sentences and follow them with short sentences. A thing I teach my students. Real-real.
- I spent a couple weeks at Dartmouth. Robert Frost: creepy.
- I grew up in Tucson. Tucson is what my collection Desert sonorous is about.
- I’m not a regional writer, though; more a writer with a regional book.
- I admire regional writers. They’re less flighty than I am flighty. Subject-matter-wise, I mean.
- Studies in the Hereafter is actually just my response to Cocktail.
- Most importantly: wearer of shorts vs. pants whenever possible.
