Sanderson's Fiction Writing Manual
by Jim Sanderson
Award-winning fiction writer Jim Sanderson has for many years taught university courses in writing fiction. This manual presents the best elements from his courses and is designed to help both beginning and advanced writers of fiction. A bonus in the book is an anthology of short stories written by university students.
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About the Author
In the thirty years that Jim Sanderson has been writing seriously, critics have given him many labels. He went from being an "aspiring" writer to a "working class, Texas" writer when he won the Kenneth Patchen Prize ('92) for his short story collection Semi-Private Rooms (Pig Iron Press 1995).
With the publication of his essay collection A West Texas Soapbox (Texas A & M Press 1998), he became a "Texas humorist and essayist." When his El Camino Del Rio (Univeristy of New Mexico Press 1998) won the 1997 Frank Waters Prize, given for the best novel about the southwest, he was called a "new rural Southwestern literary writer."
El Camino Del Rio was subsequently reviewed in the Washington Post and New York Times as a mystery; thus Sanderson became a "mystery writer." With the University of New Mexico Press's publication of two more novels, Safe Delivery (2000 Violet Crown Award finalist) and La Mordida (2002), he became a "literary mystery writer." With the publication of Nevin's History (Texas Tech University Press, 2004), he became a "historical writer" or a "Western writer."
With Faded Love (Ink Brush Press, 2010), he returned to being a "short story writer" and was honored as a finalist for the 2010 Jesse Jones Award for the best book-length fiction by a Texan or about Texas, sponsored by the Texas Institute of Letters.
So Sanderson lets others choose his labels. Dolph's Team (Ink Brush Press 2011) is another in his literary-mystery series. Trashy Behavior (Lamar University Press 2013) is a collection of literary short stories. Nothing to Lose (TCU Press 2014) is a darkly comic literary mystery. Its prequel, Hill Country Property (Livingston Press 2015), is a "historical" novel about the 1970s.
In addition, Sanderson has published over eighty short stories, essays, and articles. Most notably, "Bankers" won the 2012 Texas Institute of Letters' Kay Cattarulla Award for the best short story about Texas or by a Texas Writer. For a living, Sanderson teaches fiction writing and American literature at Lamar University, where he now serves as chair of the Department of English and Modern Language.
