Michael Noll is a writer, teacher, and Community Schools Coordinator at Peñasco ISD in Northern New Mexico. His short stories have been published widely, including in The Best American Mystery Stories anthology and, most recently, in Crazyhorse. He has taught for more than a decade at the university level and in independent classes in Austin, New Mexico, and online. At Read to Write Stories, he has interviewed more than 150 authors about the craft behind the work, a wealth of experience that informs his book The Writer’s Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction.
To contact Michael: michaelnoll1 (at) gmail.com
Published Works
Fiction:
“Foreign Exchange”—a story at Crazyhorse
“The Dependents”—a story at The New Territory
“The Tank Yard”—a story at Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, also in Best American Mystery Stories 2016
“A Burial, Again”—finalist for the Lamar York Prize for Fiction, published in Chattahoochee Review
“Bullheads”—a story at American Short Fiction. In a review, Roxane Gay wrote, “the real showstopper in this issue is Michael Noll’s Bullheads featuring one of the most slow-building, unexpected and chilling endings I’ve seen in a short fiction.”
“Ben Franklin”—flash fiction at The Owls
Essays
“Write like Anne Enright? You Should Be So Lucky”—essay at Fiction Writer’s Review
“Apply the (Perhaps) Most Famous Writing Exercise of All Time to Your Essays”—essay at Brevity
“Book Notes on The Writer’s Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction“—essay at Largehearted Boy
“The Kansas Literary Renaissance”—essay published at The Millions
“In Defense of Dan Brown and Bad Sentences”—an essay at “Something Bad Is Going to Happen,” the blog of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Essays on craft at Huffington Post
Essays on babies, toddlers, and being a parent at The Good Men Project
A review of Percival Everett’s novel, Erasure, at Narrative Magazine
Media Appearances:
Michael interviews actor Chris Cooper for the PBS program OnStory
Michael interviews Philadelphia screenwriter Ron Nyswaner for the PBS program OnStory
Series of panel conversations on writing and publishing, moderated by Michael Noll for the Writers’ League of Texas Podcast
Interviews:
The Writers’ League of Texas—Q&A with Our New Program Director
The Writer’s League of Texas—Instructor Spotlight
The Texas Book Festival—What I’m Reading
Read to Write Stories 