Background
Andrew Ervin was born in Media, Pennsylvania.
Andrew Ervin was born in Media, Pennsylvania.
Ervin holds a Bachelor in Philosophy and Religion (Goucher College), an Mississippi in English (Illinois State University) and Master of Fine Arts in Fiction (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
He has lived in Budapest, Hungary, Illinois, and Louisiana and now resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the first-ever Southern Review Resident Scholar at Louisiana State University. He previously taught part-time in the Honors Program at Temple University and is currently the Kratz Writer-in-Residence at Goucher College.
As a fiction writer, his short stories have appeared in the literary journals Conjunctions, Fiction International, The Southern Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Monkeybicycle and Golden Handcuffs Review.
His fiction has been included in the anthologies Chicago Noir (2005), Mythtym (2008), Topograph (2010), and Gigantic Worlds (2014). His story “The Light of Two Million Stars” in Conjunctions was listed among the “distinguished submissions” in Best American Short Stories 2010, edited by Richard Russo.
Selections of his fiction appear online at Hobart, Significant Objects, Revolver and Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. His first book was a collection of novellas, Extraordinary Renditions, published in 2010.
Ervin’s debut novel Burning Down George Orwell’s House was published in 2015 by Soho Press.
The Paris-based publishing house Gallimard has acquired the French translation rights
As a critic, Ervin has published hundreds of book reviews and essays in United States of America Today, New York Times Book Review, The Believer, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, American Book Review and elsewhere. Selections of his critical essays can be found online at Salon, The Rumpus, Conversational Reading and Publishing Perspectives. His first book-length work of criticism, a “cultural and experiential history of video games, from Tennis for Two (1958) to Minecraft and beyond, drawing on art criticism and interviews with seminal game creators” is forthcoming from Basic Books.
As an editor, Ervin interned at the publishing houses Dalkey Archive Press and FC2.
He guest edited two issues of American Book Review. He has worked at the literary magazines Monkeybicycle, Ninth Letter and The Southern Review and is currently a contributing editor at Philadelphia Review of Books.