Eckhard Gerdes

Eckhard Gerdes (born 1959) is an American novelist and editor. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He is the author of eight published novels:

* "Projections" [1986, Depth Charge Press]
* "Ring in a River" [1989, Depth Charge Press]
* "Truly Fine Citizen" [1992, Highlander Press]
* "Cistern Tawdry" [2002, Fugue State Press]
* "Przewalski's Horse" [2006, Red Hen Press]
* "The Million-Year Centipede, or, Liquid Structures" [2007, Raw Dog Screaming Press]
* "Nin and Nan" (appeared in "Bizarro Starter Kit (Blue)" [2008, Bizarro Press]
* "My Landlady the Lobotomist" [2008, Raw Dog Screaming Press]

His work reflects experimental technique, sometimes ignoring time, space, or cause-and-effect, in the service of stories of individuals struggling to transcend fear and limitation. His recent work has been associated with the Bizarro Fiction movement, of which he is one of the leading proponents.

Reviews of his work have appeared in "Rain Taxi," "Notre Dame Review," and "Cream People," "Review of Contemporary Fiction" and elsewhere.

Eckhard Gerdes is the editor of "The Journal of Experimental Fiction," issues of which are usually "Festschrifts" on a single writer (e.g. John Barth, Raymond Federman, Harold Jaffe). He has also written on modern and post-modern literature for "Review of Contemporary Fiction," "Hyde Park Review of Books," and other magazines.

Gerdes has twice been the recipient of the Richard Pike Bissell Creative Writing Award for excerpts from "Przewalski's Horse." "The Million-Year Centipede" was selected as one of the top ten mainstream novels of 2007 in the annual Preditors and Editors Readers Poll. He has also been a finalist for both the Starcherone and the Blatt fiction prizes for his unpublished manuscript "White Bungalows." For "Cistern Tawdry" Gerdes was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award in the Fiction Category. He lives in Chicago; he has three children.

External links

* [http://www.rawdogscreaming.com/authors.htm#eg Bio from Raw Dog Screaming Press]