I’m Maurice Carlos Ruffin. I’m from America’s lowest city. So, basically, I live in The Sunken Place.

I earned an MFA with distinction from the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop way back in 2013. The Workshop awarded my short story collection its Joanna Leake Prize for Fiction Thesis. Later, I wrote more things. Some of them very good. But the best ones were pretty bad. 

My writing appears in the LA Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. I’m also a lecturer, presenter, and literary curator. My novel We Cast A Shadow will be published by One World-Random House on January 29, 2019.  My editor is the unreasonably brilliant Victory Matsui. One World’s editor-in-chief is Chris Jackson (yes, that Chris Jackson). Order the hard cover, e-book, or audiobook here.

Literary representation by PJ Mark of Janklow & Nesbit Associates (NY).

Photo by Clare Welsh