Lance Olsen

Lance Olsen, author of more than 25 books of and about innovative writing, was born in River Edge, New Jersey. He received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1978, honors, Phi Beta Kappa), an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1980), and an M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of Virginia. His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney’s, and Best American Non-Required Reading. A Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency, N.E.A. Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, he teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. For ten years he taught as associate and then full professor at the University of Idaho. He has also taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, the University of Kentucky, on summer and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Turku, Finland, and at various writing conferences. Since 2007 he has taught experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. From 2002 to 2018, he served as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two, or FC2; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America’s best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities. He was Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review from 2007 to 2013. Olsen’s wife, assemblage-artist Andi Olsen, and he live in Salt Lake City.