Sam Ruddick

About Me

Fiction writer. Sometimes poet. Essayist. Published a bunch (well, maybe not a huge bunch) of short stories, in places like Phantasmagoria, The Red Rock Review, Gulf Stream, The Sonora Review, the Georgetown Review, and The Saint Ann's Review (those last two forthcoming). Published poems, too, though fewer by far, in Pearl and Painted Bride Quarterly, Stirring. Won a couple fancy fiction awards, though I suspect not particularly well-known ones: Henfield Prize in 2007 and Joan Johnson Award at USM in 2008. Assistant Editor, 971menu.com. Staff writer, Luna Park. Adjunct Professor, College Writing, U Mass Lowell and Bunker Hill Community College.

Once worked in a car wash. Wasn't very good at it.

Why do you write?

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Any favorite authors? Books?

Harold Pinter. Sophocles. Donne. Frederick Barthelme. Anton Chekhov. Beckett (Godot, Endgame) and Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Miranda July. Graham Greene. Somerset Maughm. Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter). Coetzee. Faulkner (Absalom, Absalom and As I Lay Dying). Hemingway (short stories, Sun Also Rises, Farewell to Arms). Eliot. Pound. Balzac. Zbigniew Herbert. Emily Bronte. Bukowski. Tony Hoagland. My cat, Tadzio (he writes circles around Wordsworth). Myself. My wife (Deja Earley), and "I Am Legend," by Richard Matheson (we all have our vices). Much better than any of the film adaptations.