Eric Puchner

Eric Puchner is the author of four books, including the new novel Dream State, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and a New York Times bestseller, and the novel Model Home, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His stories and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, McSweeney’s, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories . He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Eric's novel (working title: The Burial Tree) is a literary Western set in the 1880s that centers around a boy named Jethro, who, in the company of his alcoholic father—a Union war hero fallen from grace—goes on an epic journey in search of his missing mother. It’s about how his religious faith, and the faith he has in his country, is shaken to its core. Eric hopes to investigate the origins of our violent, gun-besotted culture and the collective hallucination of the American Dream.