Mitch Berman
Mitch Berman (born May 29, 1956) is an American fiction writer known for his imaginative range, exploration of characters beyond the margins of society, lush prose style and dark humor. Section::::"Time Capsule". Berman's novel "Time Capsule", the tale of a jazz saxophonist's journey across a post-apocalyptic America, was nominated by its publisher, Putnam, for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Pulitzer Prize. A "New York Times" "New and Noteworthy Book,", the novel evoked comparisons with Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn", and the musicality of its author's style was noted by many critics, including  Fanny Howe in "The New York Times", the "San Diego Union" ("a pied piper laying down a hypnotic line of patter"), the "San Francisco Chronicle" ("reminiscent of a Thelonius Monk solo"), and Kurt Vonnegut ("high-intensity jazz for the very sharpest of readers"). Carolyn See, in "The Los Angeles Times", hailed "a brave and heartening book" and the author's "absolutely perfect ear for dialogue." The novel's editor was the late Faith Sale, who also worked with Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Amy Tan and Kazuo Ishiguro. Short stories. Berman's stories span an eclectic array of characters , settings and circumstances: Berman's stories, nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes, have been named to two special mentions in the Pushcart Prizes and a one in The Best American Short Stories. Major anthologies in which his work is represented include "Pow Wow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience", "Voices of the Xiled: A Generation Speaks for Itself," "The Male Body", and "Sudden Fiction (Continued)". Nonfiction. Berman has also written nonfiction on a wide variety of subjects. With Susanne Lee, he went to Beijing to cover the violent crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 for the "Village  Voice". His "Los Angeles Times Magazine" profile of the world chess champions, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, received special mention in the first "Best American Sports Writing", edited by David Halberstam and Glenn Stout. With Susanne Lee, he served as co-freelance editor of "Children of the Dragon: The Story of Tiananmen Square" (essays and photographs from the student movement), reviewed several books on the crackdown, among them one by Harrison Salisbury for "The Nation", and, for the "Los Angeles Times Magazine", profiled jazz drummer Max Roach. He has also reviewed the works of science fiction authors Harlan Ellison and  Ray Bradbury for the "Los Angeles Times Book Review". Biography. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Southern California and Eugene, Oregon, Berman graduated in 1979 from the University of California at Berkeley. Encouraged by Ishmael Reed and Russell Banks, he graduated from the MFA Program in Writing at Columbia University in 1991. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin and SUNY Purchase, where he served as the first holder of the Royal and Shirley Durst Chair in Literature.