Author Bio

photo: Melissa Ginsburg

Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, population 200, a former mining town in the Appalachian hills.

His books include Shifty's Boys, The Killing HillsCountry Dark, Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, The Good Brother, The Same River Twice, No Heroes, and My Father the Pornographer.

He wrote and produced scripts for True Blood, Weeds, and Treme.  His television work was nominated for an Emmy.

His work is in many anthologies, including The Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Memoirs, Best American Food Writing, Best of the Decade: New Stories of the South, and The Vintage Book of American Short Stories.

His writing has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  He received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for “prose that takes risks.”  The international magazine Granta included him in its list of the “Top 20 Young American Writers.”

He currently lives in rural Lafayette County near Oxford, Mississippi.