CHARLES BAXTER

Charles Baxter (b. 1947) was born in Minneapolis and graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul , Minnesota . He earned his Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1974 and began to teach English at Wayne State University . Currently he directs the writing program at the University of Michigan .

In 1984 Baxter published his first collection of short stories, Harmony of the World, which won the Associated Writing Programs Award for short fiction. The title story was included in the 1982 Pushcart Prize anthology and in Best American Short Stories 1982 (selected by John Gardner). In 1985 Baxter followed with his second collection, Through the Safety Net, which contained his often-reprinted story Gryphon, about an eccentric substitute teacher who baffles her fourth-grade class with her esoteric knowledge of mythology and superstition. That piece subsequently appeared in Best American Short Stories 1986 (chosen by Raymond Carver) and in Best American Short Stories of the Eighties (1990), edited by Shannon Ravenel.

He has also published three novels and a book of essays about fiction, Burning Down the House (1997). The essays explore the nature of the imagination's grip on the commonplace things of daily life "and how one lives in the pressure of that grip" as a creative writer.

Return to Stories