Cellar Door by Vanderslice, John (2004) Audio CD

by John Vanderslice

Audio CD

About the author

John Vanderslice hails from southern Maryland, specifically the eccentric community of Moyaone, which was developed in the 1950s and 60s by a fearless crew of overeducated, wannabe hippies and anti-social survivalists escaping from Washington DC and its ruthlessly expanding white collar suburbs. After twelve years of Catholic schooling, and too many summers working as a lifeguard, he left the southern Maryland woods to attend the University of Virginia, from which he graduated in 1983. A series of silly jobs, and a flurry of different addresses, in the Washington DC metro area finally led to him entering the MFA in Poetry Writing program at George Mason University in 1986, where he studied under Peter Klappert, William Matthews, and Susan Tichy. He graduated in 1991 and started teaching writing to college freshmen at GMU and Northern Virginia Community College-Annandale. In 1993, he entered the Ph.D program in the English Department at the University of Louisisana-Lafayette, located at the epicenter of the Cajun cultural world. After four years of fine dining, great music, and inspired literary fellowship he moved to Conway, Arkansas, where he began teaching part-time at the University of Central Arkansas while acting as a stay-at-home dad for his infant son. Several years and another son later, he is a Professor of Creative Writing in UCA's new Department of Film, Theatre, and Creative Writing. There he teaches fiction writing--and occasionally other genres--both to undergraduate majors and to graduate students in the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop. His household is comprised of his wife Stephanie, their three cats, and their two dogs.

More than eighty of his stories, poems, essays, and one-act plays have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. A partial list of these journals includes Seattle Review, Versal, Sou’wester, Laurel Review, Crazyhorse, The Pinch, Southern Humanities Review, 1966, Squalorly, Foliate Oak, Red Wheelbarrow, and Exquisite Corpse. Some of the anthologies are Appalachian Voice, Redacted Story, Chick for a Day, The Best of the First Line: Editors’ Picks 2002-2006, and Tartts: Incisive Fiction from Emerging Writers.
He is the author of the linked short story collection Island Fog (Lavender Ink, 2014), the historical novel The Last Days of Oscar Wilde (Burlesque Press, 2018), and the literary crime novel Nous Nous (Braddock Avenue Books, 2021).

You can employ the following links to find some of his works published in online journals.

Short story "Him and Me" in rkvry journal: https://rkvryquarterly.com/him-and-me...

Short story "Doll" in Prime Number Magazine: https://www.press53.com/issue137short...

Short story "Salsa Verde" in South 85 journal: http://www.south85journal.com/issues/...

Short story "The Jim Crow Dope" in Bangalore Review:
https://bangalorereview.com/2021/03/t...

Flash fiction “Sacrament” in Ilanot Review (Winter 2014): http://ilanot.wordpress.com/sacrament/

Short story “Home Visit” in Gemini Magazine (July 2013): http://gemini-magazine.com/vanderslic...

Historical short story “The Evangelist” in New Delta Review Online 1 (10 Jan. 2011): http://ndrmag.org/fiction/2011/01/the...

Science fiction short story “No. 117” in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change 22.4 (Winter 2011): http://mobiusmagazine.com/fiction/no1...

Memoir essay “A Minute Inside the Ocean Cafe, July 1980” in Squalorly. (Summer 2013): http://www.squalorly.com/nonfiction/m...

Collage essay on marathon running in 1966: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction 1.2 (Fall 2013): http://issuu.com/1966journal/docs/196...