Bob Shacochis

Bob Shacochis
Bob Shacochis at the 2013 Texas Book Festival.
Born	(1951-09-09) September 9, 1951 (age 65) Pittston, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Professor
Nationality	American
Education	University of Missouri; Iowa Writers' Workshop
Genre	novel; journalism

Bob Shacochis (born September 9, 1951) is an acclaimed American novelist, short story writer, and literary journalist. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

Shacochis was born in Pennsylvania, but grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, Virginia. He was educated at the University of Missouri and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and currently teaches creative writing at Florida State University. His first short-story collection, Easy in the Islands, was published in 1985 and received the National Book Award in category First Work of Fiction. The stories are set in various Caribbean locales and reflect the author's experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Grenadines. His second story collection, The Next New World, widens the author's milieu, containing stories set in Florida and the islands of the Caribbean but also in Northern Virginia and the mid-Atlantic coast. In 1993, Shacochis published his first novel, Swimming in the Volcano, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Heavily concerned with politics, elaborate in style and description, and immersed in descriptions of nature and outdoor pursuits, his fiction reflects the influence of Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, J.P. Donleavy, and especially Ernest Hemingway. His second novel, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, was published in 2013. It won the 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction.