Literary Greats

Steve Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Against Football and Candyfreak. His short stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the Best American Mysteries, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life: Bookmarked (Ig Publishing). Stoner is a 1965 novel by the American writer John Williams. It tells the story of William Stoner, who attends the state university to study agronomy, but instead falls in love with English literature and becomes an academic. The novel narrates the many disappointments and struggles in Stoner's academic and personal life, including his estrangement from his wife and daughter, set against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century. In his entry in the Bookmarked series, author Steve Almond writes about why Stoner has endured, and the way it speaks to the impoverishment of the inner life in America. Matthew Zapruder writes that William Stoner and the Battle for Inner Life is, “A brilliant, sorrowful, hopeful, hilarious, painfully honest love letter, not just to Stoner but to writing, marriage, teaching, reading, parenting, even death. Which makes this book, like the one it praises, a love letter to life.”