Michael Martone

We are forced to live in our eyes, in the outposts of our consciousness, the borders of our being. Forget the heart. In the flatness, everywhere is surface.
 

Michael Martone is currently a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Alabama where he has been teaching since 1996. Before that, he taught at Syracuse University, Iowa State University, and Harvard University. He lives with the poet Theresa Pappas and their two sons Sam and Nick.

Martone was born and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he attended the public schools. He studied at Butler University in Indianapolis and graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English. He is also a graduate of The Writing Seminars of The Johns Hopkins University.

Martone is the author of five books of short fiction including Seeing Eye published in September of 1995 by Zoland Books as well as Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (Broad Ripple Press, 1994), Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List (Indiana University Press, 1990), Safety Patrol (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), and Alive and Dead in Indiana (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). He has edited two collections of essays about the Midwest: A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest and Townships: Pieces of the Midwest (University of Iowa Press, 1988 and 1992). He edits Story County Books, and his newest book, The Flatness and Other Landscapes (University of Georgia Press, 2000), a collection of his own essays about the Midwest, won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 1998.

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