Happiest People in the World (Clarke)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1968 (?)
• Where—Springfield, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Dickinson College
• Awards—Mary McCarthy Prize for Fiction
• Currently—lives in Portland, Maine


Brock Clarke is the author of several books of fiction, most recently the novels The Happiest People in the World (2014), Exley (2010—a Kirkus Book of the Year, finalist for the Maine Book Award, and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (2008—American Library Associate Notable Book of the Year, New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice pick). His books have been reprinted in a dozen international editions, and have been awarded the Mary McCarthy Prize for Fiction, the Prairie Schooner Book Series Prize, a National Endowment for Arts Fellowship, and an Ohio Council for the Arts Fellowship, among others.

Clarke’s individual stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe, Virginia Quarterly Review, One Story, The Believer, Georgia Review, New England Review, and Southern Review and have appeared in the annual Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies and on NPR’s Selected Shorts.

He lives in Portland and teaches creative writing at Bowdoin College and in University of Tampa’s low residency MFA program. (Adaptd from the author's website.)