Brian Evenson

Celebrated fiction writer and literary translator Brian Evenson will join the faculty of California Institute of the Arts School of Critical Studies in January 2016. He comes to CalArts from his post in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University where he has served as Royce Professor of Excellence in Teaching.

Author Samuel Delany, CalArts’ 2015 Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence, describes Evenson as “a modern Poe,” whose stories, novellas and novels “occur under an immense pressure of language, insight, and observation.“  The author of a dozen books of fiction, Evenson’s recent work includes the story collection Windeye and the novel Immobility which were both finalists for the 2012 Shirley Jackson Award.

“We are looking forward immensely to Brian joining the faculty,” noted CalArts School of Critical Studies Dean Amanda Beech. “He’s produced a remarkable body of innovative, boundary-pushing, genre-busting fiction, and will be a tremendous role model and resource for students in our MFA Creative Writing Program as well as undergraduates.”

Evenson’s novel Last Days won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. Other books include The Wavering Knife, which received an International Horror Guild Award for best story collection, Dark Property and Altmann’s Tongue. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship. His writing has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian.

Evenson has also authored ten book-length translations of work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine and Manuela Draeger among others.

CalArts School of Critical Studies brings together internationally recognized writers, poets, scholars and thinkers working in both new and traditional forms across a wide variety of disciplines, extending from narrative fiction, performance and multimedia to cultural criticism and political theory. The school offers two graduate programs: the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Program and the Master of Arts Aesthetics and Politics Program. In both programs, the expertise of Institute faculty is complemented with an extensive series of readings, lectures, workshops and longer-term residencies by a diverse range of visiting writers, theorists and artists.