March 3, 2004 SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) – Celebrated short story writer Dan Chaon will read from his work at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 22, as part of The Writers Institute’s Visiting Writers Series at Susquehanna University. The free, public reading will be held in Isaacs Auditorium of Seibert Hall. Chaon is the author of Among the Missing, a collection of short stories which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award. The title story, as well as the story “Falling Backwards,” won Pushcart Prizes, and he received an O. Henry Award for “Big Me,” another story from that collection. In 2003, his first collection of stories, Fitting Ends (1996), was reissued in a new edition, which included two uncollected stories, by Ballantine Books. The release of his first novel, You Remind Me of Me, is anticipated for June of 2004. He is under contract for two additional novels to be published in 2006 and 2008. Booklist says, “Chaon succeeds brilliantly in suggesting the immensity and mystery floating silently below the surface of everyday life, shadowy compressions of all the complicated and contradictory thoughts and feelings that humans conceal from each other out of fear and love.” Chaon’s work has been published in such magazines as Story, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly, and anthologies such as Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and the O'Henry Prize Stories. Chaon earned a master of fine arts in creative writing from Syracuse University, where he studied under Tobias Wolff. He currently lives in Ohio with his wife and two sons, and serves as the Houck associate professor in the humanities at Oberlin College. Chaon is the sixth of eight writers scheduled to read at Susquehanna during the 2003-2004 school year as part of the Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by The Writers Institute. On March 31, fiction writer Robert Boswell will visit the university. Contact: Victoria Kidd 570-372-4119 #vk/2174#