Marshall Klimasewiski

Senior Writer in Residence

MFA, Bowling Green State University
MA, Boston University

Department of English

research interests:

Fiction Writing

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contact info:

Email: mnklimas@wustl.edu
Phone: 314- 935-4398
Office: Duncker 124

mailing address:

Washington University
CB 1122
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

Marshall Klimasewiski has published two books of fiction, and his stories have appeared in such outlets as The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly. He has taught in the MFA Program at Washington University since 1999.

Marshall N. Klimasewiski is the author of two books, both published by W. W. Norton: The Cottagers (2006), a novel, and Tyrants (2008), a story collection. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Tin House, TriQuarterly, Subtropics, The Yale Review, The Missouri Review, and The Antioch Review, and have been included in Best American Short Stories and The Best of Tin House: Stories. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Originally from Connecticut, he has taught in the Writing Program at Washington University since 1999.

Courses

L13 221: Fiction Writing 1
L13 321: Fiction Writing 2
L13 421: Advanced Fiction Writing
L13 521: Graduate Fiction Workshop
Craft of Fiction: Historical Fiction
Craft of Fiction: Dialogue
Craft of Fiction: The Novella
Craft of Fiction: Story Cycles

in the news:

5.22.18

Senior Writer in Residence Marshall Klimasewiski’s piece, “William Gaddis and the Thoughts of Others,” appears this month in Conjunctions (alongside work by Professor Mary Jo Bang)

Tyrants: Stories

By Marshall Klimasewiski

The grouped stories in Tyrants trace the many forms of emotional inheritance―cultural, romantic, and historical. Some deftly portray both time and place, while others mine interpersonal relations with such intimacy and truth that they could be set anytime, anywhere. In the first sequence of stories, a son inherits and reconsiders his father’s convoluted and extravagant notions about love, sex, wealth, and fatherhood. In the second, an American man and his Korean wife confront the cultural implications of a romantic, self-imposed exile. And in the historical fictions that complete the collection, love and flight, ambition, exploration, and exile intertwine in a helium balloon above Sweden, in an Italian airship at the North Pole, and in Stalin’s dacha during the Nazi invasion. Marshall N. Klimasewiski’s talent for “deft psychological triangulations” (New York Times Book Review) and for capturing “the subtle dynamics between people” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) is on full display here.

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The Cottagers: A Novel

By Marshall Klimasewiski

Cyrus Collingwood, age nineteen, suspects that he may be a genius without a calling. He is a year-round resident of East Sooke, Vancouver Island, and has a natural resentment for the summer cottagers who descend on its rocky beaches. When two vacationing American couples arrive―old friends with a complicated history―they become his obsession. Greg and Nicholas are engaged in an academic collaboration that looks more like competition; Samina and Laurel are old friends who have grown apart and developed a strange jealousy. Cyrus spies on the cottagers through their windows, then begins to insinuate himself into their lives. When one of the cottagers goes missing, no one will look at any of the others the same way again.

Amazon