Biography

Lance Olsen received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

 (1978, honors, Phi Beta Kappa), an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop

Iowa Writers' Workshop

The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...

 (1980), and an M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

. For ten years he taught as associate and then full professor at the University of Idaho

University of Idaho

The University of Idaho is the State of Idaho's flagship and oldest public university, located in the rural city of Moscow in Latah County in the northern portion of the state...

; for two he directed the University of Idaho's M.F.A. program. He has also taught at the University of Iowa

University of Iowa

The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...

, the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

, the University of Kentucky

University of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...

, on summer and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, and at various writing conferences. Currently he teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

  and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at FC2, or Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities. He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review.

Writing

Olsen is author of ten novels, one hypermedia text, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Hotel Amerika, and Best American Non-Required Reading.

He is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart Prize

Pushcart Prize

The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....

 recipient, and was the governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence from 1996-1998. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist (Permeable Press

Permeable Press

Permeable Press was a San Francisco-based literary publishing company founded in 1990 by Brian Charles Clark. A "micropress" operating on less than U.S.$100,000 per year, Permeable published a number of trade paperback books, chapbooks, and the literary magazines Puck, Shock Waves, Q-Zine, Naked...

,1994) was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and his work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, and Finnish.

The hypertext version of his novel 10:01, created in collaboration with multimedia artist Tim S. Guthrie, was published by the Iowa Review Web in 2005 and included in the Electronic Literature Organization Collection.

Lance Olsen’s story “News Feed| Status Updates| Photos| Posted Items| Live Feed” won an &NOW award in 2009 and was published in The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing. Olsen is also a regular participant in the biennial &NOW festival, a celebration of experimental and innovative writing.

Olsen's wife, assemblage-artist Andi Olsen, and he divide their time between the mountains of central Idaho and Salt Lake City.

Novels

• Live from Earth (NY: Available Press/Ballantine Books,1991)
• Tonguing the Zeitgeist (San Francisco, CA: Permeable Press,1994)
• Burnt (La Grande, OR: Wordcraft, 1996)
• Time Famine (San Francisco, CA: Permeable Press, 1996)
• Freaknest (La Grande, OR: Wordcraft, 2000)
• Girl Imagined by Chance (Tallahassee, FL: Fiction Collective Two, 2002)
• 10:01 (print version: Portland, OR: Chiasmus Press, 2005; hypermedia version: Iowa Review Web 7.2 November 2005)
• Nietzsche's Kisses (Tallahassee, FL: Fiction Collective Two, 2006)
• Anxious Pleasures: A Novel After Kafka (Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007)
• Head in Flames (Portland, OR: Chiasmus, 2009)
• Calendar of Regrets (Tuscaloosa, AL: Fiction Collective Two, 2010)

Critical Studies

• Ellipse of Uncertainty: An Introduction to Postmodern Fantasy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987)
• Circus of the Mind in Motion: Postmodernism and the Comic Vision (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990)
• William Gibson (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1992)
• Surfing Tomorrow: Essays on the Future of American Fiction (Prairie Village: Potpourri, 1995), editor
• Lolita: A Janus Text (NY: Twayne, 1995)
• In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop, co-edited with Mark Amerika (SDSU Press, 1995)

Short Story Collections

• My Dates With Franz (Amherst, MA: Bluestone Press, 1993)
• Scherzi, I Believe (La Grande, OR: Wordcraft, 1994)
• Sewing Shut My Eyes (Normal/Tallahassee: Fiction Collective Two/Black Ice, 2000)
• Hideous Beauties (Portland, OR: Eraserhead, 2003)

External links

• Interview (2010) with Lance Olsen about Head in Flames with Rain Taxi
• Interview (2008) with Lance Olsen on the FC2 Blog
• Interview (2006) with Lance Olsen about Nietzsche's Kisses, by The Nietzsche Circle
• Interview (2003) with Lance Olsen about Girl Imagined by Chance and Hideous Beauties with FlashPoint