Martin Pousson

Martin Pousson
Born	April 13, 1966 Crowley, Louisiana, USA
Occupation	Novelist, Poet, Professor
Nationality	American
Genres	Fiction, Poetry
Literary movement	Southern literature, Cajun literature, Gay and Lesbian literature
Influences Dorothy Allison, Frank McCourt, Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Doty

Martin Pousson (born April 13, 1966) is an American novelist, poet, and professor.

He was born and raised in Louisiana, in the Cajun French bayou land of Acadiana. Some of his favorite writers include Carson McCullers, Truman Capote and James Baldwin, as well as Denis Johnson and Junot Diaz.

His first novel, No Place, Louisiana (2002), was published by Riverhead Books, and it told the story of a Cajun family and an American dream gone wrong. The novel won acclaim from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham and the Los Angeles Times, and it was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award in Fiction.

His first collection of poetry, Sugar (2005), was published by Suspect Thoughts Press, and it centered on the lives of outsiders, especially Cajuns, Southerners and gay men. Some of the poems also dealt with racism and the AIDS epidemic. The collection was praised by Alfred Corn and Jake Shears, and it was named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. Interestingly enough, he says that this collection would not have ever been published if it were not for a friend's saved copy of the manuscript.

His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Epoch, Parnassus, ISLE: Oxford Journals Icon, Transfer, Cocktail, New Orleans Review, Verse Daily, Intersection, The Louisiana Review, Love, Bourbon Street, and Gay City Anthology and Cimarron Review

He has taught at Columbia University in New York City, at Rutgers University in New Jersey and at Loyola University New Orleans. He is currently Assistant Professor of English at California State University, Northridge, in Los Angeles. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program and the Queer Studies Program, and some of his most popular courses include Narrative Writing, Advanced Narrative Writing, Theories of Fiction, and Gay Male Writers.

External links

• http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/no_place_louisiana.html
• http://www.suspectthoughts.com/pousson.html
• http://www.suspectthoughts.com/presssugar.htm
• http://www.lambdaliterary.org/archives/finalists_LLF_awards.html
• http://english.binghamton.edu/cwpro/BookAwards/GardnerWinners.htm
• http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/no_place_louisiana/
• http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/1573222003.asp
• http://www.versedaily.org/2006/aboutmartinpoussoncr.shtml
• http://sasfest.org/article.php?story=pousson.martin
• http://www.csun.edu/english/profile.php?id=26
• http://www.csun.edu/qs/Faculty-Pousson.html

Persondata
Name	Pousson, Martin
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	April 13, 1966
Place of birth	Crowley, Louisiana, USA
Date of death
Place of death