STEVEN WINGATE

Wifeshopping
A Mariner Original from Houghton Mifflin (2008)
Winner of the Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize in Fiction from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference

Thirteen short stories about American men in various stages of the search for love. Some find it, some walk past it, some let it slip away.

"Brilliantly rendered and achingly true and full of the yearning for connection to the Other that defines our humanity. This is a splendid debut by an important new voice in American fiction."
     Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

"What makes these studies in discovery and disillusionment so startling and affecting is the energy of Steven Wingate's language, and the agency of his characters . . . . The stories in Wifeshopping expand with subsequent readings; they do not end on the page, but continue in a reader's mind."
     Amy Hempel, author of The Dog of the Marriage and Tumble Home (from the foreword)

"Wingate is a fine storyteller and a writer capable of exciting flights of language.... It makes me hope we'll see more books from him."
    Steve Almond, Los Angeles Times

Essays and Criticism
I write periodically on the craft of fiction and the writing life, often for the web journal Fiction Writers Review. I've also written reviews for American Book Review, Rain Taxi, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. You can click on the "Quick Links" session at right and visit the Blog page for samples of my essays on the web.

Hybrid Genre Prose
I believe in experimentation: finding new ways to connect to my material and new ways to express that connection. My hybrid genre prose--non-narrative screenplays, prose poems, lists of all kinds, and form-driven projects--have appeared in such journals as Witness, Mississippi Review, Sonora Review, Pank, and the Fiction Collective 2 anthology Degenerative Prose: Writing Beyond Category. Two examples are at left.