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Photo: Annette Hornischer

Writer, and Professor, Columbia University

Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow in Fiction - Class of Fall 2013


Ben Marcus is a professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and the author of five books of fiction: Notable American Women (Vintage, 2002), The Father Costume (Artspace Books, 2002), The Age of Wire and String (Knopf, 1995), The Flame Alphabet (Knopf, 2012), and the forthcoming collection of short stories, Leaving the Sea (Knopf, 2014). His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Harper’s, New Yorker, Paris Review, The Believer, New York Times, McSweeney’s, and other publications. Marcus is the editor of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories and serves as the fiction editor for The American Reader. Marcus studied philosophy at New York University (BA, 1989) and fiction writing at Brown University (MFA, 1991). A John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in 2013-14, he has also received grants from the Creative Capital Foundation (2009), a 2008 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, and three Pushcart Prizes.

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