Christian Winn, Idaho's 2016-2019 Writer in Residence, was born in Eugene, Oregon, and grew up in Palo Alto, California and the Seattle area. He now lives in Boise, Idaho where he writes and teaches. He is the founder of the Writers Write fiction workshop series, co-founder and Director of Storyfort, producer of the Campfire Stories reading series and the Couch Surfer Artist Series. He is a graduate of Seattle Pacific University, and the Boise State University MFA program.
His stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Award, as well as The Best American Mystery Stories. His story, "The Dirtiest Hamburger in the World," won Gulf Coast's annual fiction award. His story, "Rough Cut," was published in a National Magazine Award-winning issue of McSweeney's.
His short story collections, Naked Me, and What's Wrong With You is What's Wrong With Me are set in the west - California, Washington State, Idaho, Nevada - and peopled with men and women at the fringes, characters on the brink, coming to understand – sometimes overtly, sometimes obliquely – what it means to live in a flawed world. His characters are generally hopeful, willing to believe they might find peace, or a semblance of understanding within the earnest clutter of love, of addiction, of friendship, of dreams, of death. His short stories are not always linked by characters or place, but through the lives portrayed they thematically lend to a broader understanding of our human walk down an often unsteady life-path. Grocery clerks, bartenders, young fathers, wise sons and daughters, gamblers – the people of our everyday world – they come to life loudly and quietly in his work so as to entertain, to instruct, to allow the reader to interpret their own world in a deeper, more comprehensive manner.
He is currently represented by International Creative Management, and is seeking more fine homes for his work.
“I wander toward Virginia Street and sit on a bench made of molded, wood-like plastic. I’m tired even through the coursing adrenalin, and am thinking pretty hard about how it seems if we can win a little money here with the last of that $2,200 we can ease back into Seattle with spending cash and an armload of new stories, rest for a while, then maybe head out again. The moving, that’s what seems important now.”
