Bio and Contact

Essentials

I was born and raised in Utica, New York and currently live in Las Vegas with my wife and son. I serve as an Assistant Professor in Residence for the Honors College at UNLV. I'm an alum of the MFA program in creative writing at Oregon State University and the MA program in writing at Johns Hopkins University. I completed my BA at The State University of New York Geneseo.

Books

I am the author of six full-length books. My first three were short story collections: You Might Forget the Sky was Ever Blue is available from Duck Lake Books (2019), Circus Folk is available from Hoot ‘n’ Waddle (2019), and The Long Way Home is available from Cowboy Jamboree Press (2020). My debut novel, My Grandfather’s an Immigrant, and So Is Yours is out from Cowboy Jamboree Press (2021). My most recent release was my first essay collection; Stories Wrestling Can Tell is out from Cowboy Jamboree Press (2023). My new short story collection, This Year’s Ghost, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2025.

My chapbook, Autopsy and Everything After, won The Florida Review's Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Contest (2017-2018). I previously published two other chapbooks, The Leo Burke Finish with Gimmick Press (2017) and Distance Traveled with Bent Window Books (2018).

Recognition

I won Bayou Magazine's Jim Knudsen Editor’s Prize for Fiction (2014) and Prime Number Magazine's Flash Fiction Contest (2017). My piece, “Training” was selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2019.

I've previously published or have work forthcoming in over 200 different publications, including Bat City Review, The Pinch, The Normal School, Passages North, Barrelhouse, Hobart, and Prairie Schooner online. I have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021,2022), Best New Poets (2016), and Best of the Net honors (2011, 2016, 2017, 2020), and had work on the Longlist for Wigleaf's Top 50 Very Short Fictions (2017).

Editing

I was a co-founder and managing editor for 45th Parallel, an international literary journal based out of Oregon State. I currently serve as a contributing editor for Moss, an online literary journal of the Pacific Northwest.

Interviews

You can read interviews with me via the UNLV News Center, Sequestrum, The Rappahannock Review (2015 and 2017), Orson's Review, Coffin Bell, Milk Candy Review, and NFReads.

Contact

You can follow me on Twitter @miketchin and email me at mikec at acappellablog dot com.