The writer Michael Martone enjoys straddling the line between fiction and non-fiction, causing readers of his short stories and essays to often wonder, “What is true, and what is false?”
The answer, Martone argues, isn’t readily available in life. What you might think is real turns out to be nothing but fiction and vice versa. His attitude toward reality makes him both a boldly original and a hard to classify contemporary writer.
“The thing that’s so frustrating about Michael Martone is that his wonderful mercurial tendencies don’t let those of us in nonfiction completely call him our own,” John D’Agata, author of the book “Halls of Fame,” said recently.
At 8 p.m. on March 31, Martone will read from his entertaining mix of fiction and essays at Austin Peay State University’s Morgan University Center, Room 303. A reception and book signing will follow the reading.
Martone, a creative writing professor at the University of Alabama, has found much success with his unique writing style in the last decade. He recently published the short story “The Death of Derek Jeter” in Esquire Magazine, and he is the author of several books, including “Racing in Place” and “The Flatness and Other Landscapes.” The spring 2010 issue of APSU’s Zone 3 Literary Journal will feature a story by Martone, as well as a flash interview.
The March 31 reading, which is free and open to the public, will give area residents the opportunity to hear examples of the groundbreaking experimentation currently taking place in the field of creative writing.
“Martone’s essays are dazzling high wire acts in the ‘theater of betweenness’—enacting and exploring elusive states of being and becoming,” Lia Purpura, author of “On Looking,” said. “Watch Martone cast his father as a green, velour, female millipede mascot! See coach Bob Knight perform as a dazzleflauge trickster! Observe the word ‘gawk’ turned into an epistemological adventure up an elevator shaft and beyond! Postcards, racing, eye charts, the Midwest and much more are read as ciphers, mysteries, forms to turn this way and that in the light of both reason and play.”
For more information on Martone or the reading, contact Susan Wallace with the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at 931-221-7031 or wallacess@apsu.edu
About Michael Martone
Martone was born and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he attended the public schools. He studied at Butler University in Indianapolis and graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English. He is also a graduate of The Writing Seminars of The Johns Hopkins University.
Martone is the author of five books of short fiction including Seeing Eye published in September of 1995 by Zoland Books as well as Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (Broad Ripple Press, 1994), Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler’s List (Indiana University Press, 1990), Safety Patrol (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), and Alive and Dead in Indiana (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). He has edited two collections of essays about the Midwest: A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest and Townships: Pieces of the Midwest (University of Iowa Press, 1988 and 1992). He edits Story County Books, and his newest book, The Flatness and Other Landscapes (University of Georgia Press, 2000), a collection of his own essays about the Midwest, won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 1998.
