Brock Clarke
Brock Clarke is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently a collection of short stories, The Price of the Haircut. His novels include The Happiest People in the World, Exley (which was a Kirkus Book of the Year, a finalist for the Maine Book Award, and a longlist finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (which was a national bestseller, and American Library Associate Notable Book of the Year, a #1 Book Sense Pick, a Borders Original Voices in Fiction selection, and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice pick). His books have been reprinted in a dozen international editions, and have been awarded the Mary McCarthy Prize for Fiction, the Prairie Schooner Book Series Prize, a National Endowment for Arts Fellowship, and an Ohio Council for the Arts Fellowship, among others.
Clarke’s individual stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe, Virginia Quarterly Review, One Story, The Believer, Georgia Review, New England Review, Southern Review, and have appeared in the annual Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts.
Clarke lives in Portland, Maine and teaches creative writing at Bowdoin College and in The University of Tampa’s low residency MFA program.
“I had what, I wanted, it was with me, in the room, including the room itself. Was it possible that we hear that voice not when we want something else but when we're in danger of losing the things we already have?”
“If only my mother had a book to hold, she wouldn't have looked so lonely. And maybe this was another reason why people read: not so they would feel less lonely, but so that other people would think they looked less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone.”