Underrated Writers

Philip F. Deaver

From Dan Wickett:  "He was a winner of the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award back in 1986 with the collection, Silent Retreats, and having recently re-read this, I was reminded just how damn good it  was.  He's since published many a story in literary journals, seeing his name in Pushcarts, O'Henry's and BASS anthologies in recent years.  He has another story collection and a novel he's shopping around and I look forward to seeing them in print by 2007."

More about Philip F. Deaver
+  philipfdeaver.com
+  Selections from Deaver's poetry collection, How Men Pray
+  Deaver discusses the marketing of How Men Pray at Conversational Reading
+  Dan Wickett's recent conversation with Deaver

Mike Magnuson

This author was recommended by Dan Wickett. According to Dan, Magnuson moved from writing about an Ohio "repo worker for a rental agency" in his first novel, The Right Man for the Job, to evangelists and weathermen in rural Wisconsin in his second, The Fire Gospels. Magnuson then published two works of creative nonfiction back-to-back. Lummox is, according to Dan, "as politically incorrect as humanly possible and all the better for it." Magnuson's most recent nonfiction is Heft on Wheels, which "follows Mike's lifestyle change from being a slightly overbearing heavyweight drinker, to an extremely lean, non-drinking, non-smoking (though maybe still a bit overbearing) cyclist." Dan's also happy to repeat a rumor that Magnuson's "working on fiction again, which is great for readers of damn entertaining literary fiction!"

More about Mike Magnuson
+  Dan's interview with Magnuson
+  Magnuson's catalog bio at Crown Publishing
+  Bookslut's review of Heft on Wheels

Erin McGraw

Dan Wickett says that all three of Erin McGraw's short story collections--Lies of the Saints,  The Good Life, and Bodies at Sea--are "excellent," but her 2002 novel, The Baby Tree, is "nearly perfect . . . She should have many, many readers." McGraw teaches at Ohio State University. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction appear everywhere from The Atlantic to The Georgia Review.

More about Erin McGraw
+  An interview with McGraw
+  Dan's interview with McGraw
+  "The Penance Practicum" in The Kenyon Review

Benjamin Percy

This author's debut story collection, The Language of Elk, will be published soon and, in a word from recommender Dan Wickett, the collection is "fantastic." Percy is a recent graduate from the creative writing program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and has been placing stories all over the map from Pindeldyboz to the next issue of The Paris Review. In 2002, he won The Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award for his story "Falling." Wickett tells us that Percy is "just finishing revisions on his first novel." One to watch, as they say.

More about Benjamin Percy
+  Percy describes his experience placing his collection with CMU Press
+  "The Whale" in Land-Grant College Review
+  "Crash" in Western Humanities Review

Kellie Wells

Dan Wickett writes of Wells: "Her story collection, Compression Scars, won the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award a few years back and her debut novel, Skin, will be published by the University of Nebraska Press  [as part of their excellent Flyover Fiction series] in the spring of 2006. Wells blends southern gothic writing with biology, religion, and an incredible vocabulary to wonderful results."

More about Kellie Wells
+  A pdf excerpt from Skin
+  A review of Compression Scars
+  Wells's experience with her story collection