Mark Brazaitis

Mark Brazaitis is the author of five books, including The Incurables: Stories, winner of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize from the University of Notre Dame Press. Stories in the collection originally appeared in Ploughshares, The Sun, Confrontation, Cimarron Review, Post Road, and the Notre Dame Review. About The Incurables, Kay Redfield Jamison said, "The stories are wry, compassionate, and provide a deep understanding of the strengths and frailties of human nature and the ways in which individuals play out the hard cards they are dealt." Brazaitis' book of poems, The Other Language, won the 2008 ABZ Press First Book Prize, judged by Heather McHugh. Poems in the collection first appeared in The Sun, Witness, Notre Dame Review, Poetry East, Poetry International, and other literary magazines. One of the poems in the collection, "Soccer Until Dusk," is featured in Uncommon Journeys, a publication of the Peace Corps, and on the Peace Corps World Wise Schools' Web site. Brazaitis is also the author of The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, and Steal My Heart, a novel published in 2000 by Van Neste Books. His second collection of stories, An American Affair, won the 2004 George Garrett Fiction Prize from Texas Review Press and was published in 2006. A former Peace Corps volunteer and technical trainer, Brazaitis is a professor of English and the director of the Creative Writing Program at West Virginia University. Born in East Cleveland, Ohio, he lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, with his wife and two daughters.