Bret Lott
Bret Lott is the bestselling author of fourteen books, most recently the nonfiction collection of Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian (Crossway, 2013) and the novel Dead Low Tide (Random House, 2012). Other books include the story collection The Difference Between Women and Men; the nonfiction book Before We Got Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life; and the novels Jewel (an Oprah Book Club pick) and A Song I Knew by Heart. His work has also appeared in The Yale Review, The New York Times, The Georgia Review, and in dozens of anthologies.
Born in Los Angeles, he received his BA in English from Cal State Long Beach in 1981 and his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984. There, he studied under James Baldwin. From 1986 to 2004 he was Writer-in-Residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston. He left to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he loves most: teaching.
His honors include being named Fulbright Senior American Scholar and Writer-in-Residence to Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel; speaking on Flannery O’Connor at The White House; and having served as a member of the National Council on the Arts from 2006 to 2012. Currently he is nonfiction editor of the journal Crazyhorse. His fifteenth book, a nonfiction collection titled Cherries on the Golan, Olives in Jerusalem, will be out in 2023. Lott was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2015. He and his wife, Melanie, live in Hanahan, South Carolina.
Born in Los Angeles, he received his BA in English from Cal State Long Beach in 1981 and his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984. There, he studied under James Baldwin. From 1986 to 2004 he was Writer-in-Residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston. He left to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he loves most: teaching.
His honors include being named Fulbright Senior American Scholar and Writer-in-Residence to Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel; speaking on Flannery O’Connor at The White House; and having served as a member of the National Council on the Arts from 2006 to 2012. Currently he is nonfiction editor of the journal Crazyhorse. His fifteenth book, a nonfiction collection titled Cherries on the Golan, Olives in Jerusalem, will be out in 2023. Lott was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2015. He and his wife, Melanie, live in Hanahan, South Carolina.
