Michael Atkinson (writer)

Michael Atkinson (born 1962) is an American writer, poet and film critic. His debut novel is Hemingway Deadlights (St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books, 2009), and he has written film and culture critiques for The Believer, Sight & Sound, The Guardian, Film Comment, The Village Voice, In These Times, True/Slant, Spin, Maxim, The Boston Phoenix, Details, The Progressive, Moving Image Source, IFC.com, TCM.com, Movieline, The Poetry Foundation, Chicago Reader, LA Weekly, The Stranger, The American Prospect, City Paper (Baltimore), Modern Painters, and other publications.

His volume Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood (SUNY Press) featured work by Guy Maddin, Stuart Klawans, Chuck Stephens, Dennis Lim, Ed Park, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Joshua Clover, Jessica Winter, David Thompson, Howard Hampton, David Sterritt, and others.

His debut book of poetry is One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train (Word Works), and his poems have also appeared in a number of journals, including The Threepenny Review, Ontario Review, Chelsea, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Epoch, Crazyhorse, The Seneca Review, New Letters, Cimarron Review, and The Laurel Review, among others.

Since 1997, Atkinson has taught at Long Island University/C.W. Post.

He has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and was a featured writer in September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (ed. William Heyen, Etruscan Press, 2002), The Best American Movie Writing 2001 (John Landis & Jason Shinder, eds., Avalon/Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001), Celluloid Jukebox (Jonathan Romney & Adrian Wooton, eds., British Film Institute, 1997), and The Best American Poetry 1993 (eds. Louise Gluck & David Lehman, Collier/Macmillan, 1993).

Atkinson also co-authored and co-produced the pilot for the proposed TV series, Babylon Fields (2007), produced by 20th Century Fox for NBC.

Bibliography

• Hemingway Cutthroat, St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books, New York, 2010.
• Hemingway Deadlights, St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books, New York, 2009.
• Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood, SUNY Press, Albany, 2008.
• Flickipedia: Perfect Movies for Every Occasion, Holiday, Mood, Ordeal and Whim, (Co-written with Laurel Shifrin) Chicago Review Press, Chicago, 2007.
• One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train, Word Works, Wash. DC, 2002.
• Ghosts in the Machine: Speculating on the Dark Heart of Pop Cinema, Limelight Eds., New York, 2000.
• Blue Velvet, British Film Institute, London, 1997.