John J. Clayton
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Clayton, born and raised in New York City and educated at Columbia College and Indiana University, has taught modern literature and fiction writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst since 1969. He has also been Visiting Professor at Mt. Holyoke College. His stories have been published in most major periodicals and have won prizes in O.Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize Stories. His second collection, Radiance, won the Ohio State University award in short fiction and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in 1998. His second novel, The Man I Never Wanted to Be, was also published in 1998. An essay about his work appeared in the Fall, 1998 Yale Review.

JOHN J. CLAYTON’S third novel, Kuperman’s Fire, about criminal evil, Jewish heritage, and the miracle of survival, will be published in July, 2007. His new collection, Wrestling with Angels: New and Collected Stories, will appear in fall, 2007. Recent stories have appeared in AGNI on-line and in Missouri Review, Fall, 2005. The on-line story was listed as one of the year’s ten best, and the story in Missouri Review has been chosen for the new Pushcart Prize anthology. Recently, he has also appeared in AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, and often in Commentary. A new story will appear in TriQuarterly in January,2008. His work and videotaped interview will appear in the fifth volume of Listening for God.

Clayton’s stories have often been reprinted; he has read them at universities, libraries, and synagogues. In November 2003 he was featured speaker for the Luce Program in Scripture and the Literary Arts at Boston University. “The Man Who Could See Radiance” was read at Symphony Space in New York and has been aired often on NPR since fall, 2001 as part of the Selected Shorts series. It is part of the audio anthology, Getting There From Here: Best of Selected Shorts.

Clayton has edited six editions of an anthology, the Heath Introduction to Fiction (now for Houghton Mifflin). He has also written a good deal about modern fiction, including Gestures of Healing, a psychological study of modern British and American fiction. His Saul Bellow: In Defense of Man won awards in literary criticism. He has published literary criticism on various twentieth century writers including D.H. Lawrence, E. L. Doctorow, and Grace Paley. His feature articles have appeared in both Jewish and mainstream newspapers.