The Department of English and Creative Writing welcomes Professor Peter Orner

Professor Peter Orner is the author of two novels published by Little, Brown: The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, (2006) and Love and Shame and Love, (2010), and two story collections also published by Little, Brown: Esther Stories (2001, 2013 with new foreword by Marilynne Robinson) and Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge (2013).

His latest book, an essay collection/memoir, Am I Alone Here? : Notes on Reading to Live and Living to Read (Catapult, 2016) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Professor Orner is the editor of three non-fiction books/oral histories for the Voice of Witness Series: Underground America: Narrative of Undocumented Lives (VOW/ McSweeney's, 2008), Hope Deferred: Narrative of Zimbabwean Lives (VOW/ McSweeney's, 2011) (co-edited with Annie Holmes), and Lavil: Life, Love and Death in Port-au-Prince (VOW/ Verso Press, 2017) (co-edited with Evan Lyon).

Professor Orner’s fiction and non-fiction stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and twice received a Pushcart Prize. He has been awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a two-year Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship.

Professor Orner has also received a California Book Award, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Writing and has been a finalist for the Pen/ Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Northern California Book Award. In 2017-2018, Professor Orner was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Namibia where he taught at the University of Namibia.

In the fall of 2018, Professor Orner will be teaching a creative writing topics course titled Uses of Fact: True Source Material in Prose, Poetry, and Film and an introductory fiction writing course titled Writing and Reading Fiction.