ABOUT – WILLIAM LUVAAS
William Luvaas has published four novels, The Seductions of Natalie Bach (Little, Brown), Going Under (Putnam), Beneath The Coyote Hills (Spuyten Duyvil), and Welcome To Saint Angel (Anaphora Literary Press), plus two story collections: A Working Man’s Apocrypha (Oklahoma Univ. Press) and Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle (Spuyten Duyvil), which was The Huffington Post’s 2013 Book of the Year and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. He has edited an anthology of California writers, Into The Deep End: The Writing Center Anthology 3, and an anthology of writings about the Corona Virus: The Corona Chronicles from Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. Luvaas is at work on a new novel, tentatively titled Blind Flight, and a hybrid memoir: The Secret People.
Little, Brown nominated The Seductions of Natalie Bach for The National Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner Award, and independent film producer George Paaswell optioned film rights for the book. Going Under was nominated for The National Book Critics Circle Award, and A Working Man’s Apocrypha was nominated for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Ashes Rain Down was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and The Montaigne Medal; Beneath The Coyote Hills was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award.
Luvaas has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Edward Albee and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundations. His Story “Ashes Rain Down” won first place in Glimmer Train’s Winter ’07-‘08 Fiction Open Contest, “Family Life” won The Ledge Magazine’s 2010 Fiction Competition, “The Firewood Wars” was co-winner of Fiction Network’s 2nd National Fiction Competition, and “Out There” won Honorable Mention in Carpe Articulum’s International Short Fiction Award Series. Ten of his stories have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. A film of his story “A Working Man’s Apocrypha,” produced and directed by his wife, Lucinda Luvaas, was awarded Best Short Feature Film at the Delta International Film Festival in 2006.
Luvaas’s short fiction (over fifty stories), articles and essays have appeared in many publications. He has been a contributing writer to The San Diego Reader, Cosmopolitan (Japanese edition), and The American College Testing Program. He is online fiction editor for Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts.
Raised in Eugene, Oregon, Luvaas graduated cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a student activist. He was the first VISTA Volunteer in Alabama, working with black sharecroppers and domestic workers for civil rights and economic justice. The “William Luvaas Community Center” in rural Madison County was named in his honor. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. As Fiction Coordinator for New York State Poets in Public Service, he was writer-in-residence in dozens of schools, hospitals and juvenile detention facilities, including The United Nations International School and Bronx High School of Science. Luvaas has taught creative writing at San Diego State University and in the MFA Program at UC-Riverside, as well as at The Writer’s Voice (New York) and The UCLA Writing Program. He has also worked as a carpenter, pipe maker, window washer, and freelance journalist. Luvaas has traveled widely and has lived in England, Israel, and Spain, and for a year in a primitive shelter he built in a giant stump in the Mendocino County redwoods. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Lucinda, a painter and film maker.
SHORT FICTION:
William Luvaas’s short stories have appeared in the following periodicals and anthologies:
The American
The American Literary Review
American Fiction Anthology (Vol. 9)
Antioch Review
BlackBird
Blueline
Carpe Articulum Lit. Review
Chicago Quarterly Review
Chiron Review
Cimarron Review
Colere
Confrontation
Edge Literary Journal
Entropy Magazine
Epiphany
Essays and Fictions
Fiction Network Magazine
Glimmer Train
Grain Magazine (Canada)
Hotel Amerika
The Ledge Magazine
Los Angeles Journal
Main Street Rag
Mosaic
NO PLACE FOR A PURITAN: The Literature of California Deserts (anthology)
North American Review
One Mead Way
Open Spaces Magazine
Oxford Magazine
Paraspheres (anthology)
Phantom Seed
Pretext 10 (anthology – Great Britain)
The Providence Journal Sunday Magazine
The Quarterly
Red Rock Review
Rhapsodia
The Round Table
San Diego Reader
Saranac Review
Sequestrum
Serving House Journal
Short Story
Square Lake
Stand Magazine (Great Britain)
The Sun: A Magazine of Ideas
Tamaqua
Texas Review
Thema
“Through The Ash, New Leaves” (Cutthroat 27 Anthology)
Touchstone
Veritales: The First Anthology
Vignette
The Village Voice
The Write Room
NONFICTION:
William Luvaas’ essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in the following periodicals:
Americana Magazine
Art Times
Art Worker’s News
California Living Magazine – San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
Cosmopolitan (Japanese edition): New York Message Section (many articles)
Creative Crafts
Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts
Glacial Hills Review
Glimmer Train “Bulletin”
Harper’s Weekly
KYSO Flash
Mayday Magazine
Open Letters Monthly
The MacGuffin
Pangyrus
San Diego Reader (many articles)
San Francisco Examiner/Chronicle
TRUTH TO POWER: Writers Respond To The Rhetoric Of Hate And Fear (Anthology)
Washington Post Book World
AWARDS & NOMINATIONS:
– 12 stories nominated for The Pushcart Prize
– Ashes Rain Down: a story cycle was a finalist for the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Short Story – Fiction category
– Ashes Rain Down was a finalist for the Montaigne Medal/The Eric Hoffer Awards (2013)
– Ashes Rain Down: a story cycle was named Huffington Post “Book of the Year” (2013)
– Ashes Rain Down: a story cycle was a Final Finalist for the Snake Nation Press Serena McDonald Kennedy Award for a story Collection (2012)
– Beneath The Coyote Hills was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Awards (2017)
– Short Story “It Runs in the Family” was Second-Place Winner in the William Boggs Fiction Contest sponsored by SLAB Magazine (July 2022)
– Short story “Family Life” won first place in The Ledge 2010 Fiction Awards Competition
– Short story “Out There” won “Honorable Mention: in the 2010 Carpe Articulum Literary Review International Short Fiction Award Series
– Short story “Ashes Rain Down” won first place in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open Contest (Winter 2007-08)
– National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction (2006-07)
– A film of Luvaas’s story “A Working Man’s Apocrypha,” directed and produced by Lucinda Luvaas, was awarded “Best Short Feature Film” at Delta International Film Festival (2006)
– “Outstanding Faculty & Staff Award,” San Diego State University (1998-9)
– Short story “Carpentry” was a finalist in the American Fiction Anthology Competition, judged by Joyce Carol Oates (1997)
– Short story collection Yesterday After The Storm was twice a finalist for the Spokane Prize
– Short story collection Yesterday After The Storm won “Honorable Mention” in the Capricorn Fiction Award (1994)
– Essay “The History of a Dead Incisor” was a finalist in The MacGuffin Literary Essay Contest
– Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Literary Grant to assist in revision of Report From God’s Country – a novel (1988)
– Short story “The Firewood Wars” was Co-Winner of Fiction Network’s 2nd National Fiction Competition (1986)
– Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship (1981)
