Steven Sherrill

Steven Sherrill has been making trouble with words since 8th grade, when he was suspended from school for two weeks for a story he wrote. He dropped out of school in the 10th grade, ricocheted around for years, eventually earning a Welding Diploma from Mitchell Community College, which circuitously to an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Now, Steven is an Associate Professor of English and Integrative Arts at Penn State University, Altoona, where he teaches, paints, and captains the Allegheny Bilge Rats Shanty Choir. He has three novels and a book of poems in the world. He has written several articles on contemporary artists for Modern Painters and for TATE Magazine. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Fiction in 2002. His first novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, is translated into 8 languages and was recently released as an audio book by Neil Gaiman Productions. His second novel, Visits From the Drowned Girl, published by Random House (and nominated by them for the Pulitzer Prize), US and Canongate, UK was released in June of 2004. The Locktender's House, novel #3, was released by Random House in Spring 2008. And in November 2010, CW Books released the poetry collection, Ersatz Anatomy. Most recently, Louisiana State University Press: Yellow Shoe Fiction Series has accepted the novel JOY, PA for publication in the spring of 2015.

There are other books in the works, paintings always underway, much musical silliness underway, and seventeen ukuleles in the house, and 750 vintage wooden crutches in his basement.