Greg Hrbek

Hrbek graduated from Kent School in Kent, Connecticut in 1986.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College in 1990, Hrbek taught kindergarten for three years in San Francisco and New York City, before studying for a Master of Fine Arts degree in English at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, which he completed in 1995. The University of Iowa awarded him an Iowa Arts Fellowship, and he won a James A. Michener Fellowship in 1995, which allowed him to write in California for a year, before returning to Vassar to teach half time in the English Department.[1][2][3]

From 1999–2000, Hrbek taught fiction writing full-time at Butler University, then was awarded the year 2000 Alfred Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, where he lived as fiction writer in residence.[3][4] Since 2001, Hrbek has been teaching fiction writing courses as Writer-in-Residence at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he lives with his wife, son and daughter.[1][5][6]

In 1996, at the age of 27, Hrbek won the James Jones First Novel Award for his first novel in progress, The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly, a complex story of obsessive, lifelong love.[2] He had worked on this book for two years at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and in California, and at Vassar while teaching.[3] It was published in 1999 by Bard/Avon (ISBN 978-0380977413), and was widely reviewed, favorably by Publishers Weekly and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, mixed by The New York Times and Rocky Mountain News.[7][8][9][10]

Since 1999, Hrbek has written short fiction, with stories appearing in Harper's Magazine, Salmagundi, Idaho Review, Conjunctions, and Black Warrior Review. His short story "Green World" (Harper's), was a finalist for the 1999 National Magazine Award in Fiction. "Bereavement" was a finalist for the 2007 Robert Olen Butler Prize,[11] while "The Cliffs at Marpi" was a finalist for the 2006 Bridport Prize,[12] each appearing in the respective anthologies. "Sagittarius" was a selection for The Best American Short Stories 2009. A collection of these short stories, Destroy All Monsters, was published by Bison Books in 2011, ISBN 978-0-8032-3644-8.[13] It won the 2010 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.[6]

• The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly (1996)
• Destroy All Monsters, and Other Stories (2011)
• Not on Fire, But Burning (2015)