Bruce Maclachlan "Skip" Horack, Jr. (born May 24, 1976) is an American writer.

Life and career

He was raised in

Covington, Louisiana Covington is a city in, and the parish seat of, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 11,564 at the 2020 United States census. It is located at a fork of the Bogue Falaya and the Tchefuncte River. Covington is part o ...

where he attended St. Paul's School. Horack holds a B.A. in English and a J.D. from Florida State University. He worked as a lawyer for five years in

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties ...

before committing fully to writing and teaching. He is a former Stegner Fellow and

Jones Lecturer The Jones Lectureship at Stanford University is a two-year teaching fellowship available to previous Stegner Fellows. The Lectureship is available in fiction and poetry and is intended to provide writers with the time and support needed to complete ...

at Stanford University, and is currently an associate professor at Florida State University. His story collection ''The Southern Cross'', which won the

Bread Loaf Writers' Conference The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is an author's conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1926, it has been called by ''The New Yorker'' "the oldest and most ...

Bakeless Prize, was published in 2009 by

Mariner Books Mariner Books, originally an imprint of HMH Books, was established in 1997 as a publisher of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in trade paperback. Mariner is also the publisher of the Harvest backlist, formerly published by Harcourt Brace/Harcou ...

. The contest was judged by Antonya Nelson, who called the story collection "a knockout winner." Hailed as a "storyteller of uncommon talent", Horack's stories are "artfully evoked and deeply felt" and depict characters that are "vital, funny, and heartbreakingly human". His novel ''The Eden Hunter'' was published in August 2010 by Counterpoint and was a '' New York Times Book Review'' Editors' Choice. Reviewer

Sven Birkerts Sven Birkerts (born 21 September 1951) is an American essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his book ''The Gutenberg Elegies'' (1994), which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other te ...

noted: "Horack, the author of a well-received story collection, ''The Southern Cross,'' writes luminous, clean prose... He has a poet’s tuned attentiveness, but never uses his sentences to preen." Horack's fiction and nonfiction has also appeared in ''

Oxford American The ''Oxford American'' is a quarterly magazine that focuses on the American South. First publication The magazine was begun in late 1989 in Oxford, Mississippi, by Marc Smirnoff (born July 11, 1963). The name "Oxford American" is a play on ''T ...

'', ''

The Southeast Review Florida State University (FSU) is a public university, public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher e ...

'', ''

New Delta Review The ''New Delta Review'' is a literary magazine in the United States in print since 1984 and online since 2012. The journal is published biannually with the support of Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisi ...

'', '' Louisiana Literature'', ''

The Southern Review ''The Southern Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes fiction ...

'', '' StoryQuarterly'', ''

Epoch In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured. The moment of epoch is usually decided by ...

'', ''

Narrative Magazine ''Narrative'' is an online magazine and website that is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age and publishes fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and art. It was founded in 2003. History and profile Founded in 2003, the l ...

'', and elsewhere. His novel ''The Other Joseph'' was published by

Ecco Press Ecco is a New York-based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquire ...

in March 2015.

References

External links

Official website

of ''The Eden Hunter'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Horack, Skip 1976 births Living people American short story writers Writers from Louisiana Florida State University College of Law alumni