On Patrick Michael Finn

I'm proud to nominate Patrick Michael Finn, one of my most accomplished, prolific former students and one of my favorite writers. Mr. Finn remains someone I talk about quite often, though he graduated in 1997, and someone whose stories have never left my mind. I still remember his characters—lonely Joliet teenagers struggling with religion and family, angry fathers, fading beauties. I mention him at Bread Loaf, to editors, to agents, because I think he is clearly one of the most talented writers I know, having finished with me a collection of short stories as well as a novel.

This entry is a wonderful piece of fiction, set as are all his stories in his native Illinois. Mr. Finn has a command of place and character and dialogue that make his fiction resonant and regional at the same time; as someone who writes of my native state, these qualities make his fiction valuable for me. As Philip Levine writes of work and Detroit, and Ellen Slezak writes of Polish-Catholic Detroit, Patrick Michael Finn has created his own Joliet.

—Susan Straight, author of a novel-in-stories and four novels, the latest, Highwire Moon, a National Book Award Finalist. She has taught at the University of California, Riverside, where she founded and co-directs the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts.