Brian Evenson has a double Ph.D. in English Literature and Critical Theory from University of Washington. His fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review, Storyquarterly, Conjunctions, The Quarterly, and elsewhere. While Evenson was an assistant professor at Mormon-run Brigham Young University a collection of his stories, Altmann’s Tongue, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1994, to critical acclaim and local vilification. Evenson was told by administrators and Mormon Church leaders that Altmann’s Tongue was an inappropriate book for a BYU faculty member to publish and that if he published a second book he would be fired. Evenson left BYU for a teaching position at Oklahoma State University in 1995. He was an NEA fellow in 1995.     [extracted from 1996 brochure]