Life
He was raised in Houghton, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. His mother's death when he was seven years old is reflected in the themes of his later fiction. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He went on to earn a MA from Iowa State University and a MFA from the University of Alabama.
Monson's first two books, the novel Other Electricities and the poetry collection Vacationland, were published in 2005. Other Electricities was praised widely for its innovative approach, lyric intensity, and grim humor. His nonfiction debut, Neck Deep and Other Predicaments: Essays was published in February 2007. It was critically acclaimed for its imaginative reworkings of the form of the essay. In March 2010 Graywolf Press published his collection of essays titled "Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir." The collection includes his essay "Solipsism" which was originally published on his website, republished by Pinch, and anthologized in Best American Essays 2008. In July 2010 Sarabande published a collection of his poetry titled "The Available World."
Monson is the editor of the literary magazine DIAGRAM, and the New Michigan Press. He lives in Tucson, Arizona, and teaches at University of Arizona.
Read more about this topic: Ander Monson
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Saving one human life is better than building a seven story pagoda to the Buddha.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Dragging out life to the last possible second is not living to the best effect. The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat. The best of life, Passworthy, lies nearest to the edge of death.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)
“Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing—to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)