Author Description

From the Back Cover "Thomas Benz's aptly named collection of taut, riveting short stories, Home and Castle, offers a window into the lives of men--often middle-aged,middle-class, middling and muddling--who find their livelihoods, status and families under threat. With a gift for capturing the subtleties of married life and the pains of lost social standing, Benz carves out a niche as a perceptive heir to the best of John O'Hara and John Updike and PaulaFox. His characters are in crisis, and his prose resonates with such deep authenticity that their crises become our crises. Home and Castle is a first-rate collection that grapples with the toxic anxieties of contemporary America and tackles tough questions head-on--but with a blend of insight, empathy and humor. This is a major literary debut, one not to be missed." -- Jacob M. Appel, author of The Magic Laundry and Millard Salter's Last Day, winner of numerous awards including the Hudson Prize. About the Author Thomas Benz has aBachelor's degree in English from the University of Notre Dame and recently wonthe 2017 Serena McDonald Kennedy Award for a short story collection sponsoredby Snake Nation Press. He has had sixteen stories published with magazines such as The Madison Review, William and Mary Review,the Mud Season Review, Blue Penny Quarterly, the Beacon Street Review, Willardand Maple, Blue Lake Review, Carve and others. He has written severalfeature articles for the Evanston Roundtable. He won the Solstice Short Story Contestin 2011. He was a finalist in the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction CollectionContest in 2013 and 2015. He received honorable mention in the New MillenniumShort Fiction Contests in 2014, 2015 and 2016. He has alsobeen associated with a few writers' organizations in the Chicago area,including Off Campus Writers Workshop, Northwestern professor Fred Shafer'snovel workshop, the Writers Workspace and Story Studio Chicago. Further iformation can be found at facebook.com/Thoma