Discipline: Literature – nonfiction

Chris Offutt

Discipline: Literature – nonfiction
Region: Iowa City, IA
MacDowell Fellowships: 2003
More: chrisoffutt.com
Chris Offutt is an American writer. He is most widely known for his short stories and novels, but he has also published two memoirs and nonfiction articles. In 2005, he had a story included in a comic book collection edited by Michael Chabon, and another in the anthology Noir. He has written episodes for the TV series True Blood and Weeds. In 1992, Offutt published his first short story collection, Kentucky Straight. His second book was the 1993 memoir The Same River Twice. In 1997 he published his first novel, The Good Brother. In 1999, he published his second collection of stories, Out of the Woods. His next book was a memoir, No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home (2002), about a six-month return to Rowan County where he had lived as a child. In 2005, Offutt made his comic book debut when he wrote "Another Man's Escape" for Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist. A second comic is included in the anthology Noir, from Dark Horse Comics. Offutt has been a visiting faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Montana, the University of New Mexico, Grinnell College, Morehead State University, and Mercer University. He is teaching at the University of Mississippi as visiting faculty. In addition to his fiction, Offutt writes non-fiction articles, which have been published in The New York Times, Men's Journal, and the Oxford American and aired on National Public Radio.

Studios

Wood

Chris Offutt worked in the Wood studio.

Wood Studio, given to the residency program by Mrs. Frederick Trevor Hill, was completed in 1913 in memory of Mrs. Hill’s mother, Helen Ogden Wood. Like Schelling Studio, the building is sided with large, overlapping pieces of hemlock bark. When the studio was renovated in 1995, MacDowell staff researched the origins of this unusual building material and…

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