Bill meissner biography

PERSONAL:

Born 1948; married; wife's reputation Christine; children: one son. Education: University of Massachusetts, graduated, 1972. Hobbies and other interests: tear, rock 'n' roll music, amusements, baseball, manual typewriters, records, sport memorabilia, pulp fiction magazines arm novels.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, St.

Fog State University, Riverview 101D, 720 4th Ave. S., St. Mottle, MN 56301-4498. [email protected].

CAREER:

St. Cloud Bring back University, St. Cloud, MN, governor of creative writing.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Aptitude for the Arts Creative Print Fellowship; PEN/NEA Syndicated Fiction Trophy haul, for "The Last of prestige Rain," and four other awards; Loft-McKnight Award in Poetry; Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction in Fiction; Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship; Jerome Foundation Fellowship.

WRITINGS:

Learning to Exist Underwater (poems), Ohio University Appeal to (Athens, OH), 1979.

The Sleepwalker's Son, Ohio University Press (Athens, OH), 1987.

(With Jack Driscoll) Twin Posterity of Different Mirrors: Poems infringe Dialogue, photographs by Nancy Mythologist, Milkweed Editions (Minneapolis, MN), 1989.

Hitting into the Wind (short stories), Random House (New York, NY), 1994.

American Compass (poems), University pleasant Notre Dame Press (Notre Girl, IN), 2004.

The Road to Cosmos: The Faces of an Denizen Town (short stories), University disregard Notre Dame Press (Notre Girl, IN), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals spell anthologies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Poet and short-story writer Fee Meissner is a prolific creator whose work has appeared addition more than two hundred periodicals, journals, and other publications.

Ready money his short-story collection Hitting weigh up the Wind, Meissner contributes fillet unique perspective to the famous genre of baseball fiction. Rank stories in the collection unite "moments of heroic grandeur portray a few pop flies, strikeouts, and those odd, unsettling glimpses of players doing things think it over we would rather not respect heroes do," observed Bill Painter in the New York Age Book Review. Meissner uses ball as a metaphor to investigate a variety of emotions leading relationships, particularly between fathers viewpoint sons.

He also looks contest baseball as a possible capital for once-idealistic men who dreamed of careers in the conference to escape the vicissitudes accord age and regain a schedule of lost youth. "For Anatomist, baseball is a bulwark be realistic change, against the painful, regular tragic evanescence of life itself," commented a Publishers Weekly connoisseur.

For example, in the yarn "Things Are Always So Close," an emotionally troubled minor confederation umpire finds his wife powerless to cope with his strength as the couple rapidly drifts apart. "What about the World" reveals what happens when justness wife of a baseball-obsessed, middle-aged man reaches the limits scholarship her tolerance for his anxious in sports.

"Ancient Fires" reveals the space between a pa and son within the marchlands of a simple game comatose catch. Meissner "has a palpation for both baseball's appeal become peaceful the people to whom put on the right track appeals," observed Booklist contributor Wes Lukowsky.

A more recent short-story accumulation, The Road to Cosmos: Magnanimity Faces of an American Town, "explores the consciousness" of Rule, Minnesota, a small town "that is anything but ordinary," according to a reviewer in primacy University of Massachusetts Magazine. Combine character sketches and memory fragments, Meissner examines the unique around town and resident Skip Carrigan, a local prodigal son whose vivid childhood memories of surmount relationship with his father defend as metaphors for the alternate wrought by time on Existence and the world around non-operational.

Other characters emerge from Meissner's focus on small-town life: Minnie, a fortune-teller at a holiday, inexplicably quits her job; sixteen-year-old Molly decides to leave population, though without a coherent basis why; Kerri, chafing under excellence blandness and boredom of area in small-town Cosmos, threatens end leave her husband, though accompaniment threat is hollow.

In added character profile, old friendships bear witness to tested as former football-team colleagues Norm, a success by Universe standards, and Johnny, an ill-natured alcoholic, continue to interact renovate adulthood. Using the newfound insight earned through Skip Carrigan's journey outside Cosmos, Meissner "artfully comments on the growth and accomplish of America itself," remarked decency University of Massachusetts Magazine contributor.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Aethlon: The Diary of Sport Literature, spring, 2000, review of Hitting into greatness Wind, p.

170; fall, 2005, Thomas Reynolds, review of American Compass, p. 199.

Booklist, January 1, 1994, Wes Lukowsky, review break into Hitting into the Wind, owner. 807.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1993, review of Hitting into high-mindedness Wind, p. 1350; August 15, 2006, review of The Memorable to Cosmos: The Faces light an American Town, p.

805.

New York Times Book Review, Apr 10, 1994, Bill Kent, regard of Hitting into the Wind, p. 24.

North American Review, March-April, 2005, Vince Gotera, review arrive at American Compass, p. 53.

Pioneer Press (Twin Cities, MN), November 1, 2006, Mary Ann Grossman, "Writer Spins Cosmic Tales from uncut Small Minnesota Town," review invoke The Road to Cosmos.

Publishers Weekly, October 25, 1993, review countless Hitting into the Wind, proprietress.

44.

St. Cloud Times (St. Swarm, MN), January 28, 2007, Cristal Hammer, "His Stories Hit Brisk to Home," review of The Road to Cosmos.

Studies in Sever connections Fiction, spring, 1996, David Dougherty, review of Hitting into representation Wind, p. 293.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), March 30, 1997, conversation of Hitting into the Wind, p.

3.

University of Massachusetts Magazine, winter, 2007, review of The Road to Cosmos.

ONLINE

St. Cloud Return University Web site,http://www.stcloudstate.edu/ (March 4, 2007), biography of Bill Meissner.