Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, a former mining community of two hundred people, and graduated from Morehead State University before earning an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of Country Dark (2018), My Father the Pornographer (2016), No Heroes (2002), Out of the Woods (1999), The Good Brother (1997), The Same River Twice (1993), and Kentucky Straight (1992). His short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, Esquire, GQ, Playboy, Tin House, and The Oxford American. His work has been anthologized widely, including in The Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Memoirs, Best of the Decade: New Stories of the South, and The Vintage Book of American Short Stories. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award in Fiction and Nonfiction, a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for “prose that takes risks.” In addition to his fiction and nonfiction, Offutt has also written extensively for television, notably for the series True Blood, Weeds, and Treme, and his television work has been nominated for an Emmy. Offutt lives in rural Lafayette County near Oxford, Mississippi.
-
Kentucky StraightStoriesFrom"House Raising"
The tow truck lurched a few yards, dappling everyone with mud. Bobby’s ruined knee spurted a red arc. Then another. And another. The men watched, bewildered and afraid. They had slaughtered hogs in autumn and field-dressed deer in the woods. They’d seen mangled men dragged from the mines—crushed, turned blue from lack of oxygen, charred by a shaft fire. But none had watched a man slowly die.
Kentucky Straight:Stories -
Kentucky StraightStoriesFrom"Old of the Moon"
Jim aimed real careful but the bear dropped to all fours. Jim’s shot went over the bear and hit Clabe, who went down like a stuck hog. Wayne fired his pistol six times. Shot the dog. Shot the tip of the bear’s nose off. Other four bullets rattled tree leaves back through the woods. Bear reared again, mad.
Kentucky Straight:Stories -
Kentucky StraightStoriesFrom"Blue Lick"
They made Daddy get in the back seat of the police car. They drove through the yard to the road, leaving big tracks in the grass and I wrecked my bicycle trying to catch up, bent the rim bad. I pushed it back to Little Elvis, who was sitting with his bike in a big mud hole. When I couldn’t get him to come out, I sat down with him. We smeared mud on our faces and planned to break Daddy out and they’d not know who it was because of the mud.
Kentucky Straight:Stories
“The story of Mr. Offutt's journey is so rich and fantastic and desperately honest that it could stand alone. But twined with the slower, lovely wanderings of a man confronting wild nature in the womb of his wife, The Same River Twice is as moving as the current he must cross and recross to find his way.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Offutt the diarist has no models. The Same River Twice is a wild original . . . [displaying] the nihilistic passivity of a graduate student with the physical robustness of a convict.” —St. Petersburg Times
“Out of the Woods has the quiet majesty of classic American fiction. This is beautiful prose—as clear and pure and flowing as a mountain stream. Offutt packs more emotion, and more emotional truth, into a sentence than any American writer since Raymond Carver.” —Dan Cryer, Newsday
“Offutt's characters are being bypassed by the modern world, their individuality and remoteness encroached on by technology, Range-Roving settlers and the loathed government. Offutt gives these voiceless people rough, roundly textured voices and lets them all—deluded or wise—have their say. In the end The Good Brother is a classic tale of violence and retribution spawning only more violence and retribution, a centuries-old story powerfully recast by a tremendously gifted storyteller.” —Rob Spillman, Salon
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Bookshop
- Print Books
- Find your local bookstore (via IndieBound)
- Bookshop
- Print Books
- Find your local bookstore (via IndieBound)
- Bookshop
