Laura Furman
Laura J. Furman (born 1945) is an American author best known for her role as series editor for the O. Henry Awards prize story collection. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Mirabella, Ploughshares, Southwest Review.
She has written three collections of stories (The Glass House, Watch Time Fly, and Drinking with the Cook), two novels (The Shadow Line and Tuxedo Park), and a memoir (Ordinary Paradise).
She founded American Short Fiction, which was a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award. She is currently Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing. Most recently, she has announced that she has submitted a collection of short stories to her agent, and the subsequent collection will be her first new work to follow the release of 2001's Drinking with the Cook.
“She was the curator of her marriage, collector of swift quotes and unremarked-upon sensations.”
“For the biographer, the final clue to character lies in the yet unread - the scribbled note, the diary page, a notation in the margin of a draft - until the day when even the most devoted portraitist of the dead says, "Enough!" Working in the service of the dead, biographers quit their labors only when the sole remaining task is the impossible - resurrection.”