David Means is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 based in Nyack, New York

Nyack, New York

Nyack is a village in the towns of Orangetown and Clarkstown in Rockland County, New York, United States, located north of South Nyack; east of Central Nyack; south of Upper Nyack and west of the Hudson River, approximately 19 miles north of the Manhattan boundary, it is an inner suburb of New...

. His short stories have appeared in many publications, including Esquire, The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, and Harper's. They are frequently set in the Midwest or the Rust Belt

Rust Belt

The Rust Belt is a term that gained currency in the 1980s as the informal description of an area straddling the Midwestern and Northeastern United States, in which local economies traditionally garnered an increased manufacturing sector to add jobs and corporate profits...

, or along the Hudson River in New York.

Biography

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan

Kalamazoo, Michigan

The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...

, Means graduated from Loy Norrix High School

Loy Norrix High School

Loy Norrix High School is a high school located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, serving students from grades nine through twelve. It is one of two high schools in the Kalamazoo Public Schools district. The student body totals at approximately 1,400. The school is named for a former superintendent of...

 in 1980. He received his bachelor's degree in 1984 from the College of Wooster, where his I.S. was "Bullfighting in Boston and other Poems". He went to graduate school at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, where he received an MFA in poetry. He has been a part-time member of the English department at Vassar College

Vassar College

Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...

 since 2001. Means is married with two children.

Work

Contemporary Authors writes: "With Means's second collection, Assorted Fire Events: Stories, he was compared favorably to such esteemed writers as Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

 and Alice Munro

Alice Munro

Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize...

 and praised by critics for his sharp prose." James Wood, in The London Review of Books notes that "Means' language offers an exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American reality. Sentences gleaming with lustre are sewn through the stories. One will go a long way with a writer possessed of such skill. You can hear the influence of Flannery O'Connor in Means' prose: in the scintillating shiver of the beautiful imagery, in the lack of sentimentality, in the interest in grotesque violence, and gothic tricksterism." Eileen Battersby in The Irish Times

The Irish Times

The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...

has compared Means' work to that of Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty

Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...

 and John Cheever

John Cheever

John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy,...

.

Short Story Collections

• A Quick Kiss of Redemption (1991) ISBN 0688094597
• Assorted Fire Events (2000) ISBN 1893956059
• The Secret Goldfish (2004) ISBN 0007164980
• The Spot (2010) ISBN 9780865479128

Uncollected Stories

• "Stories I Used to Write," The Paris Review, No. 137, Winter 1995
• "Disclaimer," The Paris Review, No. 143, Summer 1997.
• "Elective Mute," Esquire, February 2007
• "Wait for Walk," Abitare (Italy), May, 2008
• "Tree Line, Kansas," "The New Yorker", October 25, 2010
• "The Butler's Lament," "Zoetrope" Spring 2011

Awards

• Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2000) for Assorted Fire Events
• National Book Critics Circle Award
  National Book Critics Circle Award
  The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
  
   (Finalist, 2000) for Assorted Fire Events
• The Pushcart Prize (2001)
• O. Henry Prize
  O. Henry Award
  The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
  
   (2006) for "Sault Ste. Marie"
• Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
  Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
  The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award is a literary award for short story collections. At 35,000 euro for the best book of short stories it claims to be the world's largest prize for a short story collection. Each year, roughly sixty books are longlisted, with either four or six books...
  
   (Shortlist, 2005) for The Secret Goldfish
• O. Henry Prize (2011) for "The Junction"

External links

• New York Times interview with David Means
• New Yorker interview with David Means
• The Guardian (London) review of The Spot
• Leonard Lopate Show radio interview with David Means
• Time Out review of The Spot
• Chicago Tribune review of The Spot
• Interview with David Means
• "Elective Mute" (Story) from Esquire
• Ponteri, Jay. "David Means and the Secret Mystery". Loggernaut
  Loggernaut
  Loggernaut Reading Series is a reading series in Portland, Oregon founded in 2005. Each reading features three readers and a prompt to which they respond....
  
  , 2005. Long interview discussing the author's work.
• Radio interview in which David Means discusses his book Assorted Fire Events and reads his short story The Woodcutter
• Interview at Powells.com
• Short story "The Knocking" at The New Yorker
• 2010 Short story collection "The Spot"
• New York Times Review of The Secret Goldfish
• Essay about stories by David Means
• Artist George Condo on David Means
• David Means reads "Chef's House" by Raymond Carver/New Yorker/short interview