Douglas Unger

About The Author

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*** For publicity purposes and public appearances, please feel free to use all or any portion of the following author biographies and press releases ***

douglas unger

Briefest bio (50 words):

Douglas Unger has published four novels, including Leaving the Land, a finalist for the Pulitzer, 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 boards of Words Without Borders (wordswithoutborders.org) and other arts organizations.

Brief bio for Associated Writing Programs (75 words):

Doug Unger is the author of four novels, including Leaving the Land, a finalist for the Pulitzer, and a short fiction collection, Looking for War and Other Stories. He recently completed a new novel set in Las Vegas, titled Dream City. Unger serves on the executive boards of Words Without Borders (wordswithoutborders.org) and other arts organizations, and is co-founder of the Creative Writing International program at UNLV, where he teaches.

Standard brief bio (125 words):

Douglas Unger is the author of four novels, including Leaving the Land, a finalist for the Pulitzer and Robert F. Kennedy awards, and Voices from Silence, a year’s end selection of “The Washington Post Book World.” He has also published a short fiction collection, Looking for War and Other Stories. He is co-founder of the M.F.A. in Creative Writing International program and Ph.D. with Creative Dissertation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he teaches both in the Department of English and as affiliated faculty with the Black Mountain Institute. In addition to teaching and writing, Unger serves on the executive boards of “Words Without Borders” (wordswithoutborders.org) and other arts organizations. He travels extensively in support of literary activism around the world.

Longer press-release biography (300 words):

Douglas Unger is the author of four 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 “experts recommend” selection of “The Washington Post Book World,” and a revised 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. Five years in the writing, he has just completed a new novel set in Las Vegas, titled Dream City.

Doug Unger serves on the executive boards of Words Without Borders, Point of Contact, the Americas for Conservation and the Arts, and as an advisory editor for The Americas Series with Texas Tech University Press. Unger has lived in Las Vegas since 1991, after teaching eight years at Syracuse University, and he is the co-founder of the M.F.A. in Creative Writing International program and Ph.D. with Creative Dissertation at UNLV, where he also served for two years as Interim Chair of the Department of English. Internationally recognized as a literary activist and person of letters, 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.