Lawrence Coates

Hello.

I've been teaching Creative Writing for more than twenty years, and I've been writing for as long as I can remember.

I write fiction set in Northern California, where I grew up. I want to write stories that have deep roots, that always see the present as connected to the past, and that are concerned with the fate of place as well as with the fate of people.

I've been teaching Creative Writing in Ohio for some time now, but I'm still writing about the part of California that feels like home to me: the East Bay, the Silicon Valley, the Monterey Bay Area.

My first novel, The Blossom Festival, won the Western States Book Award in fiction and was chosen for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. My second novel, The Master of Monterey, was published in 2003, and my third novel, The Garden of the World, was published in 2012 and received the Nancy Dasher Award, given by the College English Association of Ohio.

In 2015, I published my fourth novel, The Goodbye House, and also a novella, Camp Olvido.

My work has been recognized with The Barthelme Prize in Short Prose, The Miami University Press Novella Prize, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction.

You can find more information on my work at www.lawrencecoates.com.

Thanks,

Lawrence