Education
He is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program at University of California Irvine and the Doctor of Philosophy program at Florida State University.
He is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program at University of California Irvine and the Doctor of Philosophy program at Florida State University.
Todd James Pierce is primarily known as a novelist and short story writer His short stories have been anthologized in college textbooks and have been listed as distinguished stories in Best American Short Stories. Reviewers have hailed his stories as "robust", filled with an "unexpected sense of grace and ease," and as "a beautiful whirl of love and language, longing and mystery." The New York Times described his collection, Newsworld, as adroitly examining the intersection between mass media and private life: "While Pierce"s comedic realism unfolds in the background, his heroes ache in their offices and bedrooms--so desperate to communicate through press releases and letters to the editor that they"ve forgotten how to whisper into a lover"s ear."
Currently he is revising a 600-page narrative nonfiction book that tells the story of the men and women who built the first wave of American theme parks in the 1950s, as well as editing two new anthologies of short fiction: Dead Neon (a collection of post-apocalyptic fiction due out from the University of Nevada Press late in 2010) and Contemporary American Short Shorts (a collection of extremely short stories due out from MacAdam/Cage early in 2011).
He lives in Santa Barbara County and teaches creative writing at California Polytechnic State University.