Ben Marcus Explained

Ben Marcus
Occupation:	Author
Nationality:	American
Alma Mater:	New York University Brown University
Genre:	Short Story, Novel
Movement:	Experimental literature Postmodernist
Spouse:	Heidi Julavits
Children:	Delia Marcus and Solomon Marcus

Ben Marcus (born October 11, 1967) is an American author and professor at Columbia University. He has written four books of fiction. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications including Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, The New York Times, GQ, Salon, McSweeney's, Time, and Conjunctions. He is also the fiction editor of The American Reader. His latest book, Notes From The Fog: Stories, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in August 2018.

Life

Marcus grew up in Austin, the son of a retired mathematician and the literary critic and Virginia Woolf scholar Jane Marcus.^[1] His father is Jewish and his mother is of Irish Catholic background; Marcus had a Bar Mitzvah.^[2]

Marcus received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from New York University and an MFA from Brown University.^[3]

Marcus is a professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. He is the editor of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and the fiction editor at The American Reader. For several years he was the fiction editor of Fence.

Marcus is married to the writer Heidi Julavits, with whom he has two children. They live in New York City and also have a seasonal house in Maine.^[4]

Influences

Marcus's influences include Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Donald Barthelme, Richard Yates, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Bernhard, Padgett Powell, J. M. Coetzee, David Ohle, Kōbō Abe, Garielle Lutz, and George Saunders.

Awards and honours

• 2014 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award shortlist Leaving the Sea^[5]
• 2014 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, shortlist, The Flame Alphabet^[6]
• 2013 Guggenheim Fellow^[7]
• 2013 Berlin Prize Fellowship^[8]
• 2009 Creative Capital Award for Innovative Literature^[9]
• 2008 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters^[10]
• 1999 Whiting Award^[11]
• 2000 National Endowment for the Arts, Fellowship in fiction, Creative writing^[12]
• Pushcart Prize (three times)^[13]

Bibliography

Novels

• Notable American Women (2002)
• The Flame Alphabet (2012)

Short fiction

Collections

• The Age of Wire and String (1995), short stories
• Leaving the Sea (2014), short stories
• New American Stories (2015), short stories
• Notes from the Fog, Knopf, (2018), short stories

Stories

• "Elevation of the Prison Bed", The Barcelona Review, 1997
• The Father Costume (2002), novella with art by Matthew Ritchie
  • "The Dark Arts", The New Yorker, May 20, 2013
• "The Loyalty Protocol", Granta 122: Betrayal, Winter 2013 (Subscription Required)
• "The Grow Light Blues", The New Yorker, June 22, 2015
• Tool, a short story written as a review of a woo
• "Cold Little Bird", New Yorker, October 19, 2015

Other works

• Text for the photography book by Kahn & Selesnick Scotlandfuturebog (2002). Aperture Foundation, New York City, .
• The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories (2004), editor
• The Moors (2010)
• Chemical Seuss, from benmarcus.com
• Thomas Bernhard, from benmarcus.com
• On the Lyric Essay, from benmarcus.com
• Why experimental fiction threatens to destroy publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and life as we know it: A correction, a response to an essay by Mr. Franzen, from Harpers.org

External links

• Official website
• Powell's Books interview with Ben Marcus
• Random House Interview with Ben Marcus
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• Electronic Book Review reviews Notable American Women
• Ben Marcus at the American Academy Berlin as Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fiction Fellow

Notes and References

1. Web site: Ben Marcus: 'We can contain such secret misery and perversion'. TheGuardian.com. 21 February 2014.
2. Web site: Q&A; with Novelist Ben Marcus, Author of 'The Flame Alphabet' – Tablet Magazine . 2012-03-24 . 2013-11-11 . https://web.archive.org/web/20131111224317/http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/94010/keeper-of-the-flame-2?all=1 . dead .
3. Web site: Ben Marcus interview. The Days of Yore. 11 October 2010.
4. News: Julavits . Heidi . 2024-07-15 . I Put Up a Fence in Maine. Why Did It Cause Such a Fuss? . live . https://archive.today/20240721100025/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/magazine/maine-fence.html . 2024-07-21 . 2024-07-24 . The New York Times Magazine . 42 . en-US . 2024-07-21 . 0362-4331.
5. Web site: Frank O'Connor prize shortlist pits 'masters' against first-timers . The Guardian . Alison Flood . 13 June 2014 . June 16, 2014.
6. The 2014 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize Shortlist. November 27, 2013. November 30, 2013. Book Trade. https://archive.today/20131130084624/http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/50988/. November 30, 2013. dead.
7. Web site: 2013 Fellows in the United States and Canada . gf.org . January 28, 2015 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20140331141756/http://www.gf.org/news-events/2013-Fellows-in-the-United-States-and-Canada/ . March 31, 2014 .
8. Web site: Congratulating the 2013 / 2014 Berlin Prize Recipients . The American Academy in Berlin . January 28, 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150129113545/http://www.americanacademy.de/home/program/past/congratulating-2013-2014-berlin-prize-recipients . 2015-01-29 . dead .
9. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20140628164747/http://creative-capital.org/news_items/view/63 . June 28, 2014 . dead. Creative Capital Announces 2009 Artists . Creative Capital Foundation . January 28, 2015.
10. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20130823013055/http://www.artsandletters.org/awards2_popup.php?abbrev=Zabel. 2013-08-23. dead. Morton Dauwen Zabel Award. artsandletters.org. January 28, 2015.
11. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20130404202743/http://yaddo.org/yaddo/WhitingAwardRecipients.shtml . April 4, 2013. live. Yaddo Whiting Writers' Award Recipients 1985 - 2012 . yaddo.org . January 28, 2015.
12. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20140719230238/http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/NEA_lit.pdf . July 19, 2014 . live . NEA Fellowships 40-Years . National Endowment for the Arts . March 2006 . January 28, 2015.
13. U Chicago Writers, Ben Marcus, https://creativewriting.uchicago.edu/writers/kestnbaum-writer-residence/2015-ben-marcus