Luke Whisnant’s In the Debris Field won First Prize in the 2018 Bath Flash Fiction Award International Novella-in-Flash competition. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have been published in over 50 different journals and anthologies in the USA, and overseas in England, France, and Portugal. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks, a collection of stories, and a novel that was optioned by two different film production companies, eventually resulting in an independent film in 2012. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Blumenthal Foundation; has three times been listed on the “Distinguished Story List” of the Best American Short Stories; and has been reprinted three times in the annual anthology New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best.

Whisnant earned his MFA at Washington University in St Louis, where he studied with Stanley Elkin, Howard Nemerov, and William H. Gass. He joined the East Carolina University English Department in 1982, teaching courses in creative writing, literature, and professional communication. He is a two-time recipient of the department’s Bertie Fearing Excellence in Teaching Award. Since 2006 he has edited Tar River Poetry, a nationally ranked magazine of verse.