Lance Olsen
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Lance Olsen is an American postmodern writer.
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[edit] Biography
Lance Olsen (born 14 October 1956; Englewood, New Jersey) received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1978, honors, Phi Beta Kappa), an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (1980), and an M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of Virginia. For ten years he taught as associate and then full professor at the University of Idaho; for two he directed the University of Idaho's M.F.A. program. He has also taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, the University of Kentucky, on summer and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, and at various writing conferences, including The Writer's Edge. Currently he teaches innovative fiction and fiction-writing at the University of Utah and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at FC2, or Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
[edit] Writing
Olsen is author of nine novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Fiction International, Iowa Review, Village Voice, Time Out, BOMB, Gulf Coast, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
He is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist (Permeable Press,1994) was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and his work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, and Finnish.
The hypertext version of his novel 10:01, created in collaboration with multimedia artist Tim Guthrie, was published by the Iowa Review Web in 2005 and included in the Electronic Literature Organization Collection.
Asimov's writes: "Ever since the untimely death of Kathy Acker, experiments in form and voice and subject matter in the speculative genre have been all too rare. Luckily for us, however, a few brave authors remain willing to push ahead into uncharted literary territory. One of the finest is Lance Olsen."
In his 2006 novel, Nietzsche's Kisses, the most radical and influential of nineteenth-century German philosophers spends his last night alive ocked in a small room on the top floor of a house in Weimar, hovering between dream and wakefulness, memory and hallucination, the first person, second, and third, past and present. He relives his brief love-affair with feminist Lou Salomé, his stormy association with Richard Wagner’s musical genius, and his conflicted relationship with Lisbeth, his rabidly anti-Semitic sister dedicated to assuring her brother’s legacy by distorting his philosophy into a cult attractive to the rising proto-Nazi movement. The American Book Review called Nietzsche's Kisses "a brilliant achievement, a seamless, precise, marvelously affecting novel that must be read by everyone who appreciates the best of today's fiction."
"Following Nietzsche's Kisses," Publishers Weekly writes about Anxious Pleasures, "Olsen treats another great modernist to postmodernist investigation, this time retelling Kafka's Metamorphosis from the supporting cast's points-of-view. Olsen hews closely to the original, and his additions, excursions and elaborations are simultaneously stimulating and entertaining. . . . Intricately woven and richly imagined, Olsen's novel is a cerebral treat unto itself and a fine companion to Kafka's original."
His wife, assemblage-artist Andi Olsen, and he divide their time between the mountains of central Idaho and Salt Lake City.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Novels
- Anxious Pleasures: A Novel After Kafka (Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007).
- Nietzsche's Kisses (Tallahassee, FL: Fiction Collective Two, 2006).
- 10:01 (print version: Portland, OR: Chiasmus Press, 2005; hypermedia version: Iowa Revew Web 7.2 November 2005).
- Girl Imagined by Chance (Tallahassee, FL: Fiction Collective Two, 2002).
- Freaknest (La Grande, OR: Wordcraft, 2000).
- Time Famine (San Francisco, CA: Permeable Press, 1996).
- Burnt (La Grande, OR: Wordcraft, 1996).
- Tonguing the Zeitgeist (San Francisco, CA: Permeable Press,1994).
- Live from Earth (NY: Available Press/Ballantine Books,1991).
[edit] Textbook
- Rebel Yell: Writing Fiction (San Jose: Cambrian Press, 1998).
[edit] Critical Studies
- In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop, co-edited with Mark Amerika (SDSU Press, 1995).
- Lolita: A Janus Text (NY: Twayne, 1995).
- Surfing Tomorrow: Essays on the Future of American Fiction (Prairie Village: Potpourri, 1995), editor.
- William Gibson (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1992).
- Circus of the Mind in Motion: Postmodernism and the Comic Vision (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990).
- Ellipse of Uncertainty: An Introduction to Postmodern Fantasy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987).
[edit] Short Story Collections
- Hideous Beauties (Portland, OR: Eraserhead, 2003).
- Sewing Shut My Eyes (Normal/Tallahassee: Fiction Collective Two/Black Ice, 2000).
- Scherzi, I Believe (La Grande, OR: Wordcraft, 1994).
- My Dates With Franz (Amherst, MA: Bluestone Press, 1993).
[edit] External links
- Lance Olsen's Official Website
- Co-founded by Lance Olsen and Ted Pelton, a collective blog by alternative writers & publishers
- Interview (2006) with Lance Olsen about Nietzsche's Kisses, by The Nietzsche Circle
- Interview (2005) with Lance Olsen about 10:01 with the Italian magazine Literati
- Interview (2003) with Lance Olsen about Girl Imagined by Chance and Hideous Beauties with FlashPoint
