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 seven full-length books. These include the short story collections You Might Forget the Sky was Ever Blue (Duck Lake Books 2019), Circus Folk (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle Press 2019), The Long Way Home (Cowboy Jamboree Press 2020), and Territories (Serving House Books 2025). I also authored the novel, My Grandfather’s an Immigrant, and So Is Yours (Cowboy Jamboree Press 2021) and essay collection Stories Wrestling Can Tell (Cowboy Jamboree Press 2023). My new short story collection, This Year’s Ghost, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in May 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 (Gimmick Press 2017) and Distance Traveled (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, Gulf Stream Magazine and Prairie Schooner. 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.