Visiting Writer John McNally,
7 p.m. Wednesday, March 10
Room 337 Cartwright Center
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John McNally is the author of three novels (The Book of Ralph, America’s Report Card, and After the Workshop) and two story collections: Troublemakers (winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award and the Nebraska Book Award) and Ghosts of Chicago (a Chicagoland Indie Bestseller and voted one of the top twenty fiction books of 2008 by The Believer’s readers). He has also edited six fiction and creative nonfiction anthologies, on subjects as diverse as superheroes and adultery. His fiction and essays have also appeared in numerous anthologies and textbooks, including Winding Roads (Pearson/Longman), Behind the Short Story (Pearson/Longman).
His screenplay Big Man, which he co-wrote with Owen King, is in development with the producers of Milk and Sideways. A native of Chicago’s southwest side, he is presently an associate professor of English at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
Praise for McNally's new novel, After the Workshop (Counterpoint Press):
Twelve years after graduating from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jack Sheahan, the protagonist of McNally’s witty third novel, suffers from chronic self-doubt and a decade-long case of writer’s block. He keeps an unfinished novel in a box under his telephone books and earns his living as a media escort for literati invited to read in Iowa City, greeting authors at the airport, chauffeuring them around town, and occasionally running their errands—all the while seething with envy... McNally, an Iowa graduate and former media escort, clearly knows the world he admires yet takes down. His wacky literary archetypes, naked humor and sharp observations offer up an entertaining look at the writing life and the people who prop it up."--Publishers Weekly
“A swift, wicked, and very funny book about what writers do when they’re not writing. They’re gossiping, scheming, pining, teaching, going on book tours, and—in the case of McNally’s blocked and shopworn hero, Jack—babysitting more famous writers on tour and trying to think of a reason to live. The pace is brisk, the prose is buoyant, the vision clear and sharp, and the outcome unexpectedly moving. A fine novel.” —Kevin Canty, author of Where the Money Went