Joseph Coulson is a novelist, poet, playwright, and teacher. His first novel, The Vanishing Moon (2004), published as a Harvest Book from Harcourt and in German and French translations, was selected for the Barnes & Noble Great New Writers series and won the Book of the Year Award, Gold Medal in Literary Fiction, from ForeWord Magazine. His second novel, Of Song and Water (2007), was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and enjoyed both critical and commercial success in France, fueled by an award-winning translation by Judith Roze and reviews in leading publications, including Le Monde.
Three books of poetry appeared earlier: The Letting Go, A Measured Silence, and Graph. His first play, A Saloon at the Edge of the World (co-authored with William Relling Jr.), a noir drama involving a clash between William Faulkner and Raymond Chandler over the screen adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep, received a showcase production in the TAM Season of New American Plays: “Hollywood and the American Reality.”
Coulson has been the recipient of a Gray Writing Fellowship (selected by Robert Creeley) and a Ph.D. in American literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. In addition to writing and teaching, Coulson worked for several years at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago, first as Editorial Director and then, after a ten-year hiatus, as President. He is now President and Chief Academic Officer at Harrison Middleton University.