Distinguished Professor of English at Sam Houston State University, where he edits The Texas Review and directs Texas Review Press, Paul Ruffin is the author of two novels (his latest, Castle in the Gloom, published in 2004 by University Press of Mississippi), two collections of short stories, and five collections of poetry. He has edited or co-edited ten other books. He has published over seventy stories in such journals as Southern Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Connecticut Review; over 700 poems in journals such as Poetry, Paris Review, Southern Review, and Georgia Review; and over forty essays in journals and magazines such as Southern Quarterly, Shenandoah, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Southern Living. His stories appear in such texts as Harcourt Brace's College Handbook of Creative Writing and Norton's Introduction to Literature, and his poems have appeared in such texts as Little-Brown's Introduction to Poetry and Introduction to Literature. His fiction has also
been aired on NPR. His column Ruffin-It appears weekly in several papers in the South.