Douglas Unger

About The Author

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douglas unger

Briefest bio (50 words):

Douglas Unger has authored five novels, including Leaving the Land, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, his newest, Dream City, and short fiction, Looking for War and Other Stories. He is co-founder of the Creative Writing International program at UNLV and serves on the executive board of Words Without Borders.

Brief bio for Associated Writing Programs (75 words):

Doug Unger is the author of five novels, including Leaving the Land, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, his newest, Dream City, and a short fiction collection, Looking for War and Other Stories. Unger serves on the executive board of Words Without Borders (wordswithoutborders.org), and is a co-founder of the Creative Writing International program at UNLV, where he teaches for the Department of English affiliated with the Black Mountain Institute.

Standard brief bio (125 words):

Douglas Unger is the author of five novels, including Leaving the Land, a finalist for the Pulitzer and Robert F. Kennedy awards, Voices from Silence, a year’s end selection of “The Washington Post Book World,” and his newest book, Dream City, as well as a short fiction collection, Looking for War and Other Stories. He is co-founder of the M.F.A. in Creative Writing International and Ph.D. with Creative Dissertation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he teaches for the Department of English affiliated with the Black Mountain Institute, an important literary center in the American West. Unger also serves on the executive board of Words Without Borders (wordswithoutborders.org). He has devoted his nearly fifty-year career to promoting literary, educational, and labor movement activism.

Longer press-release biography (300 words):

Douglas Unger is the author of five novels, including Leaving the Land, winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award for best fiction, a citation from the P.E.N. Ernest Hemingway award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Robert F. Kennedy awards. His fourth novel, Voices from Silence, was a year’s end selection of “The Washington Post Book World,” and an updated edition was published in 2008 in French translation as Mes frères de sang. His collection of short fiction, Looking for War and Other Stories, earned top twenty ranking among books of short stories on Amazon.com. New fiction and essays have appeared in “Boulevard,” “Southwest Review,” “The Writers’ Chronicle,” and “Carve” magazines, also in the collection West of 98: Living and Writing in the New American West, and the Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Fiction. More than ten years in the writing, his newest novel, Dream City, set in Las Vegas, will be published in October, 2024, in the acclaimed Western Literature and Fiction series of the University of Nevada Press. He is currently at work on a collection of essays on the art of fiction titled The Geometries of Fiction.

Doug Unger serves on the executive board of Words Without Borders (www.wordswithoutborders.org), and as Education Chair for the education site, Words Without Borders Campus (www.wwb-campus.org). Unger is co-founder of the M.F.A. in Creative Writing International program and Ph.D. with Creative Dissertation at UNLV, where he teaches for the Department of English affiliated with the Black Mountain Institute. His awards include a Guggenheim fellowship for fiction, a Fulbright scholarship in Comparative Literature for Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, a fellowship from the Fundación Valparaíso in Spain, a State of Washington Governor’s award, the Nevada Board of Regents Creative Activities Award, and induction into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.