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Les Standiford, Professor, Director of Creative Writing
Phone:  919-5965    Office:  ACI 344  (North Campus)
Creative Writing

Program Director and Professor of English, is author of the novel Spill (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991), as well as the best-selling John Deal novels: Done Deal (HarperCollins, 1993), Raw Deal (HarperCollins, 1994), Deal to Die For (HarperCollins, 1995), Deal on Ice (HarperCollins, 1997), and the most recent Deal book, Presidential Deal (HarperCollins, 1998). He is a past recipient of the Frank O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. He has lived in Miami since 1981 with his wife Kimberly, a psychotherapist, and their three children, Jeremy, Hannah, and Alexander.

"Les Standiford makes it look easy and elegant...
each scene unfolds like a little gasp for breath." -- New York Times

"John Deal is such a rich creation you'll have to remind yourself you're reading fiction." -- Chicago Tribune

"...calls to mind the fiction of Graham Greene." -- Philadelphia Inquirer

Standiford's short stories and articles have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The Kansas Quarterly,Writers' Digest, Smoke, The Key West Reader, Confrontation, Three American Literatures, Perfect Lies: A Century of Classic Golf Fiction, and Communion: Contemporary Fiction Writers ReRead the Bible. His novels have been reprinted in the United Kingdom, Holland, France, Germany, and Japan. He has been a regular reviewer for The Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, New York Newsday, and The New York Daily News.

He attended the Air Force Academy, Columbia University School of Law, and holds a B.A. in Psychology from Muskingum College in Ohio and the M.A. and Ph.D in Literature and Creative Writing from the Universityof Utah. He spent twenty years in the West, working at times for the U.S. Forestry, the Utah Parks Company, and the U.S.Park Service. He is a former screenwriting fellow and a graduate of the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. He is the co-author of Bones of Coral, a screenplay based on the novel of the same name by James W.Hall, for MGM-Pathe. He is a member of the Associated Writing Programs, Mystery Writers of America, and the Writers Guild.

He wrote the screenplay adaptaion of Spill, which has been released as a feature film starring Brian Bosworth and seen recently on SHOWTIME. He is author of the text for the best-selling book of photographs by Alan S. Maltz, Miami: City of Dreams (1997), and of the history, Coral Gables: The City Beautiful (Riverbend Books, 1998). He has contributed a chapter to the national best-seller, Naked Came the Manatee (Putnam, 1997) with Carl Hiassen, Elmore Leonard, James W. Hall, et al.

To order any of Les Standiford's titles, including Miami: City of Dreams and Coral Gables: The City Beautiful, go directly to Books and Books Online!

His new novel, Black Mountain, is due out any day from GP Putnam.

email: standifo@fiu.edu