By the age of 30, Ted Pelton had completed a Master's in Creative Writing at University of Colorado at Boulder, a PhD in English at University of Buffalo, and received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Fiction. Nonetheless, he had found little success in getting his work – innovative fiction with a liberal (or radical) dose of politics – into print through mainstream channels. So in 2000, he founded Starcherone Books (pronounced "start yer own"), which publishes innovative fiction and sponsors an annual contest. Starcherone published Pelton's debut collection, Endorsed by Jack Chapeau. His novella, Bhang, has since been published by Blazevox Books (2004). Starcherone has four books out and four more under contract. Pelton’s own third book, a novel based on a conjectured meeting between Jack Kerouac and Malcolm X, is in progress. Excerpts appear in La Petite Zine and on this site. In addition to fiction, he has also published widely as a critic, having written on Robert Creeley, Ben Marcus, Kenneth Koch, and Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Fiction International, electronic book review, and elsewhere. He lives in Buffalo, where he is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Medaille College.