Steven Sherrill is not, absolutely not, a traditional academic, nor a scholar. But Steven Sherrill has been making trouble with words since eighth grade, when he was suspended from school for two weeks for a story he wrote. He dropped out of school in the tenth grade, ricocheted around the southern United States for years, eventually earning a welding diploma from a community college, which led circuitously to an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and as of recently, professor emeritus of English and integrative arts at Penn State University, with five novels, a book of poems, and a memoir in the world. His first novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, is translated into eight languages and was released as an audio book. His second novel, Visits from the Drowned Girl, published by Random House (and nominated by them for the Pulitzer Prize) in the United States and Canongate, United Kingdom, was released in June of 2004. The Locktender's House, novel number three, was released by Random House in Spring 2008. In November 2010, CW Books released the poetry collection, Ersatz Anatomy. Louisiana State University Press: Yellow Shoe Fiction Series released the novel JOY, PA, in March 2015. The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time was published in the fall of 2016 and lauded by Alan Gurganus in The New York Times Book Review. Motorcycles, Minotaurs, & Banjos, the memoir, is a book about twenty-one days and sixty years. A motorcycle ride down the spine of Appalachia, with a little banjo and big myth for company, to play and sing at the graves of dead banjo heroes. It's about making a life about making work.
