Daniel Mueller

Since graduating high school, I received my BA in English from St. Olaf College, taught high school English in India and Wausau, WI for four years, attended graduate school in creative writing at Hollins University, University of Virginia, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and have taught fiction writing to graduate and undergraduate students at Western Michigan University, Dartmouth College, Centre College, University of New Mexico (where I received tenure in 2005), and the Low-Residency MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte. I published my first book, How Animals Mate, a collection of short fiction written over ten years, in 1999. It won the Sewanee Fiction Prize, was reviewed in The New York Times and Washington Post, and was cited by Esquire Magazine as one of the five best story collections published in that year. New work has appeared or is forthcoming in CutBank, Prairie Schooner, Cincinnati Review, Gargoyle, Surreal South 09, The Missouri Review and The Iowa Review. With luck, I'll publish a new collection of stories soon.

Michelle Brooks, a poet, fiction-writer, and memoirist who maintains a blog (michellespells@blogspot.com), and I were married on Halloween 2009. I have one child from a previous relationship, my gorgeous, brilliant daughter Lili who turned 7 on March 20th. My gorgeous, brilliant fiancee brings no children to our marriage, but in 1979 she was only in 2nd grade, so maybe there are more in our future.

Though Lili and I find little to dislike about Albuquerque, Michelle, a native Texan, prefers dying Midwestern industrial cities to slow desert ones, and I've promised her that as soon as Lili goes to college we'll move someplace like Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, or Pittsburgh.

It was great fun seeing those of you who attended the reunion last August. Email me if you get a chance at danieljamesmueller@gmail.com. I'd like to hear from you.