Department of English Reading Series

For their Fall Fiction Reading Series, the Department of English is hosting writer Ron Tanner who will read from her new book. The ten stories in Ron Tanner's new collection, Far West, range widely--from a ruined fashion shoot in Baja California to a thwarted romance on a Pacific island. Quirky, funny, and sometimes near-tragic, these tales explore the idea of “frontier,” both emotional and geographic, as Tanner’s characters test the boundaries of their ambitions and strive mightily to realize their ever-elusive (American) dream. The author, who has lived and traveled extensively in America’s West, renders these landscapes with sensitivity and beauty, delivering with each story a journey that promises the unexpected at every turn.

Bio: Ron Tanner’s writing has been named “notable” in both Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories. His awards for fiction include the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize, the Jack Dyer Prize, the Charles Angoff Prize, the Faulkner Society gold medal, Pushcart Prize, New Letters Award, and many others, as well as fellowships from the Michener/Copernicus Society, Sewanee Writers Conference, and the National Park Service, to name a few. His novel Missile Paradise was named a “notable book of 2017” by the American Library Association. His most recent book, Far West, a story collection, won the Elixir Press book prize in 2020. He lives on an historic farm in Maryland and directs the Good Contrivance Farm Writer’s Retreat, an educational nonprofit.

For more information, contact: lpurpura@umbc.edu.

Image description: Ron Tanner, a white man with black glasses and white hair and beard, is swimming in a pond.