Mark Spitzer, MFA
Associate Professor
Thompson Hall 326
(501) 450-3339
Degree:
MFA, Creative Writing, Louisiana State University
M.A., English-Creative Writing, University of Colorado
B.A., English-Creative Writing, University of Minnesota
Teaching Specialties:
Poetry, creative nonfiction, environmental writing and literary translation
Biography:
Mark Spitzer—novelist, poet, essayist, and literary translator—grew up in Minneapolis, where he earned his Bachelor's degree at the University of Minnesota in 1990. He then moved to the Rockies, where he got a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. After living on the road for some time, he found himself in Paris for two years, as Writer in Residence at the bohemian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, where he translated French criminals and misanthropes. In 1997 he moved to Louisiana, became the Assistant Editor of Andrei Codrescu's legendary online lit journal Exquisite Corpse (www.corpse.org) and received an MFA from Louisiana State University. After teaching Creative Writing and Lit for five years at Truman State University, he is now a professor of Writing at the University of Central Arkansas as well as Managing Editor of Exquisite Corpse Annual (which he brought back into print in 2009). Spitzer is also an alligator gar-nut, who likes to catch and release seven-foot monster fish (as part of his current research) in the American South. His books include Chum (novel, Zoland Books), Bottom Feeder (novel, Creative Arts), Age of the Demon Tools (poetry, Ahadada Books), The Pigs Drink from Infinity (poetry, Spuyten Duyvil), Riding the Unit (creative nonfiction, Six Gallery Press), From Absinthe to Abyssinia (Rimbaud translations, Creative Arts), The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille (Dufour Editions), Divine Filth (Bataille translations, Creation Books), The Church (Céline translation, Green Integer), and Films without Images (Cendrars translation, Green Integer). For more information, see his personal website at www.sptzr.net.