Josh Russell, Associate Professor at Georgia State University, reads from his recently published novel, *My Bright Midnight* and talks about his upcoming third novel.
Josh Russell teaches graduate and undergraduate fiction and creative nonfiction workshops, and seminars on contemporary literature and the form and theory of fiction. His teaching, research, and creative interests include the novel, the novella, the short story (and the very short story), historical fiction, and creative nonfiction. He is the author of three novels: *Yellow Jack*, *My Bright Midnight*, and *A True History of the Captivation, Transport to Strange Lands, & Deliverance of Hannah Guttentag*. His novella, *Dakota*, appeared in Epoch in 2005, and a limited-edition fiction chapbook, Winter on Fifth Avenue, New York, was published by Oat City Press in 1997. His writing has been anthologized in New Stories from the South, French Quarter Fiction, Not Normal, Illinois: Peculiar Fictions from the Flyover, Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader, Contemporary American Short Shorts, and elsewhere. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared most recently in Epoch, Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM, American Book Review, and Black Warrior Review. Russell is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Prose and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Shane Stevens Fellowship in the Novel, as well as grants and fellowships from the University of Florida, Tulane University, and Georgia State University. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland (BA) and Louisiana State University (MFA). After teaching at the University of Florida and Tulane University, he joined the Georgia State faculty in 2004. In 2007 he was promoted to Associate Professor of English and awarded tenure, and in 2010 he was appointed Co-Director of the Creative Writing Program. He is faculty advisor for New South and associate editor at Five Points.