About
Michael Croft is senior editor at Narrative Magazine, author of numerous short stories, Nevada Arts Council Fellowship honoree, and former director of the TMCC Writers’ Conference.
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Michael was born and raised in Reno, Nevada and spent much of his youth roaming the downtown area where his father owned a small hotel, The Parkway. It was here, amongst the bars, other hotels, and the casinos that he discovered the fertile ground that has inspired his work for many years. The famed quote from Joan Didion hangs on the wall of his writing room: A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves is so radically that he remakes it in his image.
In 1976 he earned a degree in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. While living in the Bay Area he came under the tutelage of Floyd Salas, the author of the highly acclaimed novel, Tattoo the Wicked Cross. It was he who nurtured Michael from an anxious observor of the writing world into a working author. Michael has published stories with Narrative Magazine, Pacific Review, InkBrush Press, and many others. Over the years he has studied privately with some of the finest authors and editors in the country, including Tom Jenks, Elizabeth Tallent, and Randall Reid. A frequent attendee of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference, Michael has had his work enhanced by such authors as Robert Stone, Richard Ford, Oakley Hall, and Al Young. In 1990 he founded the TMCC Writers’ Conference, where he worked hand-in-hand with Dorothy Allison, Jane Hirschfield, Floyd Salas, David Corbett, Jim Houston, James N. Frey and many more in creating an environment that was warm, supportive, and inviting. His view of writing is a simple one, writers write, that’s what they do. Language is to the writer what paint is to the painter or notes to the musician. His story, “A Mother’s Son,” was recently featured as a Story of the Week selection at Narrative Magazine. |