About
News
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I contributed a list of five books to Shepherd.com, "The best historical novels of the 2000s that aren’t written the same old way." Check it out to see some of the books, by Roberto Bolaño, Olga Tokarczuk and others, that have most moved me in recent years.
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My most recent publications, after decades of not breaking lines, are poems. First, my poem about Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, "The Old Bill Lee," appeared in The Second Rainbow Coalition newsletter (page 14). I will also have three poems in the next issue of the Buffalo literary magazine, Elm Leaves Journal, in early 2025.
Bio
Ted Pelton is a fiction writer and author of four books, including the novels Malcolm & Jack and Bartleby, the Sportscaster, more than 50 published stories, and numerous essays, articles, and reviews. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature and an Isherwood Foundation Fellowship. The nonprofit small press he founded and directed for 15 years, Starcherone Books, served as an important voice in innovative fiction and the growth of small press literary publication from 2000-15. Pelton now teaches in the Creative Writing and Literature concentrations in English at Tennessee Tech University, having served as Chair, 2014-19. (The above picture shows him using a Modigliani ruler to measure the degree of his creative atrophy while an administrator.) He has a PhD in English from the University at Buffalo and a Masters in Creative Writing from University of Colorado, Boulder. He lives near Nashville with his two daughters and his wife, Dr. Susan Muchshima Moynihan, who is also on the English faculty at Tennessee Tech.
Teaching
Ted has been a university and college teacher for 32 years, in Wisconsin, Buffalo NY, and now at Tennessee Tech University. He has won numerous teaching awards and uses a Creative Inquiry approach in the classroom, which structures learning via student questions and discussion. A full Professor at Tennessee Tech, he teaches American and World Literature, Fiction Writing, and a variety of courses that have recently included The Novel, Beat Generation, Literature of Black Lives Matter, Continental Novel, and summer Lit & Movies classes.