Chicago-native Charles Blackstone is the author of Vintage Attraction, a novel published in 2013 by Pegasus Books and distributed by W.W. Norton & Company. He is also co-editor of the literary anthology The Art of Friction (University of Texas Press, 2008) and the author of The Week You Weren't Here (Dzanc and Low Fidelity Press, 2005), a novel. Chicago Public Radio included The Week You Weren't Here in its Summer Book Bag (simulcast on WTTW TV's Chicago Tonight). His recent short fiction has appeared in Esquire's Napkin Fiction Project (the piece was also selected for the &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Fiction anthology), Lewis University's Jet Fuel Review, and the University of Maine's Stolen Island. His short plays have been produced by Victory Gardens and Lifeline Theaters. Over the last decade, Blackstone has read his work at the Hyde Park Art Center, Barbara's Bookstore, Book Cellar, Bookslut Series, Quimby's, Subterranean, Dollar Store Series, Black Dog Tavern, Lake Forest College, Scoozi!, Sunday Salon Series, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Indiana University Northwest. Recently, he was interviewed as part of Gil Roth's "Virtual Memories" podcast series. Blackstone and his wife Master Sommelier and television personality Alpana Singh presented "Wine in Literature," at the 2008 Chicago Tribune Printer's Row Book Fair. At the annual AWP conference in 2009, he participated in a panel, "Docufiction: When is Fiction [Not] History?" with novelists Cris Mazza, Ted Pelton, and Ricardo Cortez Cruz. In 2011, Blackstone was named Managing Editor of Bookslut, an acclaimed book review publication and blog, with bureaus in Chicago and Berlin.

Blackstone holds degrees from UIC and the University of Colorado, where he directed the Graduate Reading Series and received the Barker Award for Fiction. He was appointed visiting writer at Shimer College in 2009, and will return to the campus to teach another workshop this summer. Blackstone has taught at Colorado, Wright College, The University of Chicago's Graham School, and coaches writers at all stages of the publication process on an individual basis. Blackstone and Singh live with their pug, Haruki Murakami, in downtown Chicago.

Charles Blackstone named one of Newcity's Lit 50 for 2012

Author photography by Erika Dufour