David Jauss

David Jauss is the author of three previous collections of short stories, Black Maps, Crimes of Passion, and Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories; two collections of poems, You Are Not Here and Improvising Rivers; and a collection of essays, On Writing Fiction. He has also edited three anthologies, most recently Words Overflown by Stars: Creative Writing Instruction and Insight from the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program. His short stories have been published in numerous magazines and reprinted in such anthologies as Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Awards: Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, as well as in The Pushcart Book of Short Stories: The Best Stories from the Pushcart Prize. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a James A. Michener/ Copernicus Society of America Fellowship, and three fellowships from the Arkansas Arts Council and one from the Minnesota State Arts Board. His collection Black Maps received the Associated Writers and Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction. A professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, he teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

New from master fiction writer and teacher, David Jauss, Words Made Flesh takes writers into a deep-dive on the craft of writing fiction. Chapters: Homo Fictus vs. Homo Sapiens; Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Abstraction?: Conveying Emotion in Fiction; The Art of Description; “What We See With”: Redefining Plot; Returning Characters to Life: What Chekhov Teaches Us about Endings; and The Flowers of Afterthought: Premises and Strategies for Revision.

The best way I know to discover how words do their work, and to understand how they can become art, is for the apprentice to study with a fierce and compassionate master of that art. David Jauss is just such a master, and this book grants its readers—you who desire to know what it means to write—an invaluable course of study, all at the hands of this extraordinary teacher, writer, and human. —Bret Lott, excerpt from the “Foreword”

Glossolalia is an absolute triumph of the short form by a master of it, and you will not read a better collection anywhere. —Andre Dubus III

If I were in charge of the seating arrangements, I’d reserve a place for David Jauss in the very first row of contemporary American fiction writers. —Wally Lamb

More Praise for
Alone with All That Could Happen: On Writing Fiction

The most friendly, intelligent, USEFUL book about writing fiction I've read in a long time. Jauss covers epiphanies, first person, point of view, flow, even how to put together a story collection. With care and fresh thinking, Jauss gets to the heart of things in ways that are insightful and compelling, debunking much of what is taught as conventional wisdom. Point of view is not what you think it is, folks. Think deeper. Write better. Read and study this book!

—Marjorie Hudson

More Praise for David Jauss

For more than three decades David Jauss has been quietly crafting gems of literature.  In this collection he demonstrates yet again the skill, insight, and artistry that have earned him a place among the very best American writers.

—Clint McCown

Glossolalia sparkles, providing readers the opportunity to engage with one of the unsung heroes of modern American short fiction.  Jauss’s stories are quietly haunting.  This is the kind of work that sticks to the soul, waiting to be carried long into the night.

—Benjamin Woodard

Written with clarity and compassion and an ability to see several sides of life simultaneously, Black Maps is a moving, impressive, deeply rewarding collection from a very talented writer. —Lorrie Moore

Black Maps is a near-perfect story collection.

—Philip Graham

What a fine collection David Jauss has written. . . . The language of the book is clearly consecrated to its characters: they and their predicaments are more important to Jauss than is any need to show us how rich his gift is.  It is very, very rich.

—Frederick Busch

Crimes of Passion is a remarkably varied performance, speaking to us at different times from 16th-century Spain and post-Vietnam America, in the voices of murderers, priests, and heart-broken lovers.  The stories are executed with verve and wit, and one of them—“Shards”—is terrifying enough to have vexed my sleep for two nights running.  A fine collection.

—Tobias Wolff