Joe Ashby Porter

Mr. Porter is the author of the novels Eelgrass (New Directions) and Resident Aliens (New Amsterdam), which he will read at this year's Festival. He has also published several collections of short fiction, including The Kentucky Stories, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and Lithuania: Short Stories (both Johns Hopkins). His short stories have appeared in Antaeus, Fiction, Fiction International, Harper's, Ploughshares, Raritan, Triquarterly, and The Yale Review. His fiction has been reprinted in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Store of Joys: Writers Celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the N. C. Museum of Art, God: Stories, Contemporary American Fiction, and other anthologies. His awards include two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. He has taught fiction writing at Virginia, at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and at Duke, where he is Professor of English. He has served as Writer-in-Residence at Brown and at the Université François Rabelais in Tours. As Shakespearean Joseph A. Porter, he is author or editor of many scholarly books and articles.

Reviews of Resident Aliens from Borders.com

Porter's characters are vivid and believable, and their personal stories give us...a fascinating glimpse into the workings of the human heart.
Booklist

A prose of elegant and deceptive simplicity and a sly but unsleeping comic vision...Joe Ashby Porter is a literally first-class writer.
Reynolds Price

It is at the same time a sophisticated piece of fiction and a refreshingly capricious exercise that is totally original. Nowhere in the pages can much be taken for granted. One is not so much constantly taken aback as consistently delighted by the language droll one minute, lyrical the next, but always highly civilized...Porter's prose is rich, yet strangely sparse, not actually a contradiction.
Durham Herald-Sun

An engaging and curious read...Porter delivers so much in so few pages. Resident Aliens is a rare and singular novel beautifully composed, cinematically arranged and delightful in nature.
Raleigh News and Observer

Everything except the language is French about this delightful novel of the American seventies: the characters (in varying degrees), the sexual sophistication, the imperturbable wit hovering above the agitate ménage à quatre, the civilized, crystalline prose with which Joe Ashby Porter draws his point that lovewhen we are luckydrives us.
Jaimy Gordon, author of Bogeywoman and She Drove Without Stopping

Reading it is like watching a kite rise into sunlight on a new summer morning.
Harry Mathews, author of Tlooth and Cigarettes

Joe Ashby Porter has written a Vietnam-era La Ronde, but with no villainyit is as much a prayer for grace as a story about itthat is consistently lyrical, intelligent, and driven by hope.
Frederick Busch, author of The Night Inspector and A Dangerous Profession: a Book About the Writing Life