Eliot Fintushel
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Eliot S. Fintushel (born March 13, 1948) is an American actor, educator and speculative fiction writer. He writes as Eliot Fintushel.Fantastic Fiction entry for Eliot Fintushel


Biography

Fintushel is a baker's son, born in
Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...
.Santa Rosa Junior College entry for Eliot Fintushel
/ref> At nine he supposedly "grinned down" a cougar terrorizing upstate New York and delivered it to the Monroe County Zoo, where it afterwards killed two zookeepers and a county sheriff before being put down by a tranquilizer gun. He studied Zen at the
Rochester Zen Center The Rochester Zen Center (RZC) is a Sōtō and Rinzai Zen Buddhist sangha in the Kapleau lineage, located in Rochester, New York and established in 1966 by Philip Kapleau. It is one of the oldest Zen centers in the United States. History Since ...
with
Philip Kapleau Philip Kapleau (August 20, 1912 – May 6, 2004) was an American teacher of Zen Buddhism in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition, a blending of Japanese Sōtō and Rinzai schools. He also advocated strongly for Buddhist vegetarianism. Early life Kapleau ...
and
Toni Packer Toni Packer (April, 1927 – August 23, 2013) was a teacher of "meditative inquiry", and the founder of Springwater Center. Packer was a former student in the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism, and was previously in line to be the successor of ...
.zer0 books entry for Eliot Fintushel
Fintushel currently makes his living as a writer and as an itinerant solo performer, fiction writer, and college teacher as an adjunct theater professor at
Santa Rosa Junior College Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) is a public community college in Santa Rosa, California with an additional campus in Petaluma and centers in surrounding Sonoma County. Santa Rosa Junior College was modeled as a feeder school for the Universi ...
. He lives between the horse stables and transmission shops behind the
Sonoma County Fairgrounds The Sonoma County Fairgrounds is a fairground and exhibition center located in Santa Rosa, California. It is where the annual Sonoma County fair takes place and other events throughout the year. History Historically, the fairgrounds has held hor ...
in
Santa Rosa, California Santa Rosa ( Spanish for " Saint Rose") is a city and the county seat of Sonoma County, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California. Its estimated 2019 population was 178,127. It is the largest city in California's Wine Country and ...
.


Theatrical career

Fintushel began his professional acting career at thirty at a mime theater in upstate New York. He has performed original solo shows at thousands of theaters, community centers, libraries, schools, and other venues, as well as various international festivals, including the National Theater, the Wolftrap International Children's Festival, and the International Clown and Mime Festival. Once, for a party of UN diplomats, he performed under the anti-aircraft gun of a German training ship in New York Harbor, putting a clown nose on then German consul Jetta Grutzner. In 2006 his Faces of Sonoma County project, funded by the Sonoma County Cultural Arts Council, found him casting faces on street corners.


Literary career

Fintushel has been active as a science fiction author since 1993. Harlan Ellison has been quoted as saying "Eliot Fintushel and his nifty stories have been an ongoing joy for me for years." Fintushel has had numerous short stories published, most in ''Asimov's Science Fiction'', with others appearing in ''Analog'', ''Strange Horizons'', ''Amazing Stories'', ''Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet'', and ''Crank!''Penguin Random House entry for Eliot Fintushel
His work has also appeared in various anthologies, including ''Jewish Sci-Fi Stories for Kids'', ''Jewish Detective Stories for Kids'', Nalo Hopkinson's '' Mojo: Conjure Stories'', ''Polyphony 4'', and several times in the annual anthology ''The Year’s Best Science Fiction''. His novel '' Breakfast with the Ones You Love'' is available from
Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
.


Recognition

As a performer, Fintushel has received the US National Endowment for the Arts' Fellowship for Solo Performance Artists twice, as well as grants for creating and touring shows from arts councils and foundations on both east and west coasts. As a writer, he has had stories nominated for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. "Izzy and the Father of Terror" was nominated for the 1999
Nebula Award for Best Novella The Nebula Award for Best Novella is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy novellas. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novella if it is between 17,500 and 4 ...
, placed sixth in the 1998 Asimov's Readers' Poll for Best Novella and eighteenth in the 1998 Locus Poll Award for Best Novella. "Crane Fly" was a finalist for the 1999
Theodore Sturgeon Award The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award is an annual literary award presented by the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best short science fiction stor ...
. "Milo and Sylvie" was a finalist for the 2001
Theodore Sturgeon Award The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award is an annual literary award presented by the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best short science fiction stor ...
. "Female Action" placed ninth in the 2002 Asimov's Readers' Poll for Best Novella. '' Breakfast with the Ones You Love'' placed eighth in the 2008 Locus Poll Award for Best First Novel.


Bibliography


Novels

*'' Breakfast with the Ones You Love'' (2007)


Short fiction

*"Herbrand's Conjecture and the White Sox Scandal" (1993) *"Ylem" (1994) *"A Ram in the Thicket" (1994) *"Hamisch in Avalon" (1995) *"Noses" (1995) *"Old Man" (1995) *"The Beast with Two Backs" (1995) *"Fillet of Man" (1995) *"Dikduk" (1995) *"Santacide" (1996) *"Popeye and Pops Watch the Evening World Report" (1996) *"Izzy at the Lucky Three" (1996) *"Shell Game" (1996) *"Sir Blamor in Dieu Et Mon Droit!" (1997) *"Izzy and the Father of Terror" (1997) *"Conejo Por Lunchay" (1998) *"Crane Fly" (1998) *"Galactic Business" (1998) *"Izzy and the Hypocrite Lecteur" (1998) *"Auschwitz and the Rectification of History" (1998) *"Honey Baby and Mademan" (1999) *"Malocchio" (1999) *"De Rerum" (1999) *"Iz and the Blue God" (1999) *"We from Afar" (1999) *"Open Mike" (1999) *"Milo and Sylvie" (2000) *"Going Private" (2001) *"Female Action" (2001) *"Drought" (2001) *"Chronic Zygotic Dermis Disorder" (2003) *"The Grass and the Trees" (2003) *"White Man's Trick" (2003) *"Kukla Boogie Moon" (2003) *"Women Are Ugly" (2004) *"Gwendolyn Is Happy to Serve You" (2004) *"The Eye" (2004) *"Bone Women" (2005) *"My Termen" (2006) *"How the Little Rabbi Grew" (2007) *"Last Drink Bird Head" (2009) *"No, Really" (2011) *"Harry Truman in Hell" (2012) *"Zen City" (2016) *"In Boonker's Room" (2016) *"Chubba Luna" (2017) *"Zen" (2018)


Verse

*"Sonnet on First Learning the Definitive Role of Neurotransmitters in the Determination of Human Emotions" (1998) *"Icommensurable" (2016)


Nonfiction

*"Bubby Sophie's Glass Tea" (1996) *"Notes on Science Fiction, Fantasy, and the Lazzo of Stage Reality" (1997) *"Letter (''NYRSF'', May 1997) (1997) *"Letter (''NYRSF'', March 1998) (1998) *"Vissi D'Arte (I've Had It with Art)" (1999) *"Introduction to Afternoon at Schrafft's" (2001) New Afterward to "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy, 2000 Signet Classics edition


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fintushel, Eliot 1948 births 21st-century American novelists American male novelists Writers from Rochester, New York Male actors from Rochester, New York American speculative fiction writers Living people 21st-century American male writers