Stuart Dybek

Stuart Dybek
Born	April 10, 1942 [1] Chicago, Illinois
Occupation	Short fiction writer, poet
Nationality	United States
Education	St. Rita of Cascia High School
Alma mater	Loyola University Chicago; Iowa Writers' Workshop
Period	1970s-
Genres	Poetry; Novels
Notable works	The Coast of Chicago

Stuart Dybek (born April 10, 1942) is an American writer of fiction and poetry.

Biography

Dybek, a second-generation Polish American,^[2] was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Chicago's Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods in the 1950s and early 1960s. He graduated from St. Rita of Cascia High School in 1959 and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He has an MA in literature from Loyola University Chicago.^[3]

Often compared to Saul Bellow and Theodore Dreiser for his unique portrayal of setting and landscapes, Dybek is "among the first writers of Polish descent (who write about the ethnic self) to receive national recognition." ^[4]

After teaching for more than 30 years at Western Michigan University, where he remains an Adjunct Professor of English and a member of the permanent faculty of the Prague Summer Program, Dybek became the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University where he teaches at the School of Professional Studies.

Work

Dybek's two collections of poems are Brass Knuckles (1979) and Streets in Their Own Ink (2004). His fiction includes Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, I Sailed With Magellan, a novel-in-stories, Paper Lantern: Love Stories, and Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories. His work has been anthologized and has appeared in magazines such as Harper's, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Tin House, Ploughshares, and Triquarterly.

His collection, The Coast of Chicago, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and cited as an American Library Association Notable Book of 2005. A story from I Sailed With Magellan, titled “Breasts,” appears in the 2004 Best American Short Stories.

Dybek was a participant in the Michigan Writers Series at Michigan State University, where he read from his work.^[5]

Awards

Dybek's awards include a Lannan Prize, a PEN/Malamud Award (1995), a Whiting Award (1985), a Guggenheim fellowship, and an O. Henry Award.^[6] Dybek was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (September 25, 2007.)^[7]

Bibliography

Novels and short story collections

• Childhood and Other Neighborhoods: Stories. Viking Adult. 1980. ISBN 978-0-67021-618-5. 
• The Coast of Chicago: Stories. Knopf. 1990. ISBN 978-0-39457-449-3. 
• I Sailed with Magellan. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2003. ISBN 978-0-37417-407-1. 
• Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 3 June 2014. ISBN 978-0-374-71055-2. 
• Paper Lantern: Love Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 3 June 2014. ISBN 978-0-374-14644-3. 

Poetry collections

• Brass Knuckles. University of Pittsburgh Press. 1979. ISBN 978-0-82293-399-1. 
• Streets in Their Own Ink. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2004. ISBN 978-0-37427-095-7. 

Short stories and essays

• Dybek, Stuart (Autumn 2009). "Seiche". Granta (108): 39–46. 
• "Vigil". The Atlantic. Fiction Issue. 2011. 

References

External links

• New York Times review of Coast of Chicago
• Stuart Dybek interview at The Writing Disorder
• Stuart Dybek bio at Northwestern University
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation