Ben Marcus

Ben Marcus (born 1967) is the author of four books of fiction. His latest book, Leaving the Sea: Stories, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in January 2014.
His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications including Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, The New York Times, GQ, Salon, McSweeney's, Time, and Conjunctions. He is also the fiction editor of The American Reader.

Marcus grew up in Austin, the son of a retired mathematician and the literary critic and Virginia Woolf scholar Jane Marcus. He received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from New York University and an MFA from Brown University. His father is Jewish and his mother is of Irish Catholic background; Marcus had a Bar Mitzvah.

Marcus is a Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, and he lives in New York City. He is married to the writer Heidi Julavits. He is the editor of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and the fiction editor at The American Reader. For several years he was the fiction editor of Fence.

Marcus' influences include Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Donald Barthelme, Richard Yates, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Bernhard, Padgett Powell, J. M. Coetzee, Kobo Abe, Gary Lutz, and George Saunders.

• 2014 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award shortlist Leaving the Sea
• 2014 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, shortlist, The Flame Alphabet
• 2013 Guggenheim Fellow
• 2013 Berlin Prize Fellowship
• 2009 Creative Capital Foundation grant for Innovative Literature
• 2008 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 1999 Whiting Award
• 2000 National Endowment for the Arts, Fellowship in fiction, Creative writing
• Pushcart Prize (three times)

• Alison Flood (13 June 2014). "Frank O'Connor prize shortlist pits 'masters' against first-timers". The Guardian. Retrieved June 16, 2014. 
• "The 2014 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize Shortlist" (Press release). Book Trade. November 27, 2013. Retrieved November 30, 2013. 
• "2013 Fellows in the United States and Canada". gf.org. Retrieved January 28, 2015. 
• "Congratulating the 2013 / 2014 Berlin Prize Recipients". The American Academy in Berlin. Retrieved January 28, 2015. 
• "Creative Capital Announces 2009 Artists". Creative Capital Foundation. Archived from the original on June 28, 2014. Retrieved January 28, 2015. 
• "Morton Dauwen Zabel Award". artsandletters.org. Archived from the original on August 23, 2013. Retrieved January 28, 2015. 
• "Yaddo Whiting Writers' Award Recipients 1985 - 2012". yaddo.org. Archived from the original on April 4, 2013. Retrieved January 28, 2015. 
• "NEA Fellowships 40-Years" (PDF). National Endowment for the Arts. March 2006. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 19, 2014. Retrieved January 28, 2015. 
• U Chicago Writers, Ben Marcus, https://creativewriting.uchicago.edu/writers/kestnbaum-writer-residence/2015-ben-marcus

Novels

• Notable American Women (2002)
• The Flame Alphabet (2012)

Other works

• Text for the photography book by Kahn & Selesnick Scotlandfuturebog (2002). Aperture Foundation, New York City, ISBN 0-89381-935-2.
• The Father Costume (2002), novella with art by Matthew Ritchie
• The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories (2004), editor
• The Moors (2010)
• The Age of Wire and String (1995), short stories
• Leaving the Sea (2014), short stories

• Chemical Seuss, from benmarcus.com
• Thomas Bernhard, from benmarcus.com
• On the Lyric Essay, from benmarcus.com
• Why experimental fiction threatens to destroy publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and life as we know it: A correction, a response to an essay by Mr. Franzen, from Harpers.org

• "Elevation of the Prison Bed", The Barcelona Review, 1997
• "The Dark Arts", The New Yorker, May 20, 2013
• "The Loyalty Protocol", Granta 122: Betrayal, Winter 2013 (Subscription Required)
• "The Grow Light Blues", The New Yorker, June 22, 2015
• Tool, a short story written as a review of a woo
• "Cold Little Bird", New Yorker, October 19, 2015