Jason Brown | |
---|---|
Born | 1969 (age 47–48) Hallowell, Maine |
Occupation | Writer, teacher |
Nationality | American |
Period | 1995–present |
Genre | Fiction |
Notable works |
Driving the Heart (1999) Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work (2007) |
Website | |
writerjasonbrown |
Jason Brown (born 1969) is an American writer. He has published two collections of short stories, and his fiction has appeared in magazines including Harper's and The Atlantic.
Brown was born and raised in Hallowell, Maine, near the Kennebec River. He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and earned an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. In 1996, he received a Stegner Fellowship to study creative writing at Stanford University.
After its initial publication in the Mississippi Review, his story "Driving the Heart" was selected for The Best American Short Stories 1996. The story later appeared in the 2012 collection Boston Noir 2: The Classics.
In 1999, Brown's debut collection was published. The New York Times described Driving the Heart and Other Stories as "bleak yet penetrating," adding that "each of Brown's elegant stories echoes with the same quiet despair." The 13 stories are mostly set in and around Portland, Maine, involving characters affected by tragic experiences past and present.Driving the Heart was a starred review in Publishers Weekly, where it was called an "extraordinary debut collection."
Brown's second collection of 11 loosely linked short stories, Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work: Stories, came out in 2007. The 11 stories set in the fictional town of Vaughn in central Maine are linked by geography and tone, with "weary, complicated souls" of all ages. With the changes in narrative point of view within some of the stories, Brown has said he was influenced by the narration in the films of Terrence Malick – Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line in particular. Some of the stories were originally published in magazines including Harper's, Epoch, Open City and The Atlantic. The book was given an A- by Entertainment Weekly, and was a starred review in Publishers Weekly. The Los Angeles Times called it "an exceptionally beautiful and devastating book." It was a suggested summer reading by NPR in 2009.