Joseph Skibell

Joseph Skibell's short stories have appeared in literary journals and his plays have been produced in theaters around the country. A recipient of a James A. Michener Fellowship, he holds an MFA from the University of Texas Center for Writers. A Blessing on the Moon (Algonquin, 1997), Skibell's first novel received "unanimously glowing" reviews throughout the United States and in Europe. For his work he received the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Steven Turner Prize for First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. A Blessing on the Moon has been translated into half a dozen languages and is available in paperback from Berkley Books, a division of Penguin.

Skibell wrote Our Own Dear Anton's Abandoned Story Cycle while at The University of Texas and it was first performed at the John Henry Faulk Living Theatre in Austin, Texas, directed by David Yeakle. The play was written in an introductory class where he was asked to adapt something by Chekhov. "The stories are part of a story cycle that wasn't completed. I kept Chekhov's idea of these two narrators basically telling the stories under changing circumstances and inhabiting their own stories. The freedom of the empty stage allows them to slip in and out of characters, stories and situations," says Skibell.

Presently Joseph Skibell is assistant professor in English at Emory University and he is now at work on his second novel, The English Disease (tentative title).

The Writers Notes