David Means is an American writer based in Nyack, New York. His short stories have appeared in many publications, including Esquire, The New Yorker, McSweeney's, and Harper's. They often feature realistic descriptions of extremely unrealistic situations (e.g.. a seedy motel room conversation with Jesus, a man being struck by lightning seven times) and are frequently set in the Midwest or the Rust Belt, or along the Hudson River in New York. He includes among his influences artist Edward Hopper, who is also from Nyack, New York. Contemporary Authors writes: "With Means's second collection, Assorted Fire Events: Stories, he was compared favorably to such esteemed writers as Raymond Carver and Alice Munro and praised by critics for his sharp prose." ¹ James Wood, in The London Review of Books notes that "Means' language offers an exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American reality. Sentences gleaming with lustre are sewen through the stories. One will go a long way with a writer possessed of such skill. You can hear the influence of Flannery O'Connor in Means' prose: in the scintillating shiver of the beautiful imagery, in the lack of sentimentality, in the interest in grotesque violence, and gothic tricksterism."

Means is a 1984 graduate of the College of Wooster, where he majored in English. He teaches at Vassar College.

Bibliography

Short Story Collections

• A Quick Kiss of Redemption (1993)
• Assorted Fire Events (2000)
• The Secret Goldfish (2004)

Uncollected Stories (Incomplete)

• "Stories I Used to Write," The Paris Review, No. 137, Winter 1995
• "Disclaimer," The Paris Review, No. 143, Summer 1997.
• “Reading Chekhov,” Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 9, No. 3, Fall 2005
• “Oklahoma,” Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter 2005
• “The Gulch,” Harper’s Magazine, April 2006
• “Nebraska,” Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 10, No. 2, Summer, 2006
• “The Spot,” New Yorker, August 21, 2006
• "A River in Egypt," New Yorker, December 4, 2006
• "Elective Mute," Esquire, February 2007
• “Facts Toward Understanding the Spontaneous Human Combustion of Errol McGee,” Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer, 2007

Awards

• Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2000)
• The Pushcart Prize (2001)
• National Book Critics Circle Award (Nomination, 2001)
• O. Henry Prize 2006
• The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 2006 (shortlist)

References

1. ^ Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

External links

• "Elective Mute" (Story) from Esquire
• Ponteri, Jay. "David Means and the Secret Mystery". Loggernaut, 2005. Long interview discussing the author's work.
• Radio interview in which David Means discusses his book Assorted Fire Events and reads his short story The Woodcutter
• Interview at Powells.com