Stephen Beachy (born 1965) is an American writer.

Early life

Beachy's parents are

Mennonites Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Ra ...

and his paternal grandparents were

Old Order Amish The Amish (; pdc, Amisch; german: link=no, Amische), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches, ...

. His brother Tim Beachy is a member of the band Squidboy. Beachy is a second cousin of biologist Philip Beachy and historian

Robert M. Beachy Robert Beachy (born in Aibonito, Puerto Rico) is associate professor of history at the Underwood International College at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Was raised in Mennonite communities in Puerto Rico and Indiana. He formerly taugh ...

and also a relative of biologist

Roger N. Beachy Roger N. Beachy is an American biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences who studies plant virology. He was the founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, and the first director of the ...

. He attended the University of Iowa from 1983 to 1990, both as an undergrad and in the

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wr ...

. As a student he traveled extensively in the US and Latin America, sometimes by motorcycle and sometimes hitchhiking, which influenced his first novel.

Writings

His first novel, ''The Whistling Song'' with cover illustrations by

Curt Kirkwood Curtis Matthew "Curt" Kirkwood (born January 10, 1959) is an American musician, best known as the guitarist, singer and primary songwriter for alternative rock group Meat Puppets. Biography Curt Kirkwood formed the Meat Puppets along with h ...

was published in 1991 and his second novel, ''Distortion'' in 2000. Two

novellas A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...

, ''Some Phantom'' and ''No Time Flat'' were published in 2006 and have been described as a cross between ''

The Turn of the Screw ''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in ''Collier's Weekly'' (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', published by Macmilla ...

'' and Herk Harvey's ''

Carnival of Souls ''Carnival of Souls'' is a 1962 American independent horror film produced and directed by Herk Harvey and written by John Clifford from a story by Clifford and Harvey, and starring Candace Hilligoss. Its plot follows Mary Henry, a young woma ...

''. Robert Gluck said, "Stephen Beachy is a visionary. In these twin novellas, he explores madness and crime with the nocturnal lyricism of empty time and space." His novel ''boneyard,'' was published in 2011. It is a collaboration with a young Amish boy, Jake Yoder, whose existence is unconfirmed, and deals with the

West Nickel Mines School shooting On October 2, 2006, a shooting occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines, a village in Bart Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV ...

in Nickel Mines, PA. Beachy has said his influences for that work include the

Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among th ...

, Agota Kristof,

Kathy Acker Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood tr ...

, and the many multibiographies written by authors with

multiple personality disorder Dissociative identity disorder (DID), better known as multiple personality disorder or multiple personality syndrome, is a mental disorder characterized by the presence of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states. The di ...

. Beachy's fiction has also been published in ''BOMB'', ''Chicago Review'', ''Blithe House Quarterly'', ''SHADE'', and various anthologies. His nonfiction publications include an essay ''God's Radar Screen'' in the anthology ''Love, Castro Street''. He has written literary and film criticism for the ''

San Francisco Bay Guardian The ''San Francisco Bay Guardian'' was a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1966 by Bruce B. Brugmann and his wife, Jean Dibble. The paper was shut down on October 14, 2014. It was relaunc ...

''. In October, 2005, he published an article in ''

New York Magazine ''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker' ...

'', exposing the writer

JT LeRoy Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy, or simply JT LeRoy is a literary persona created in the 1990s by American writer Laura Albert. LeRoy was presented as the author of three books of fiction, which were purportedly semi-autobiographical accounts by a te ...

as the concoction of a woman named Laura Albert, with the help of her family members. Beachy has been cited by scholar Daniel Shank Cruz as an important figure in Queer Mennonite literature.

Teaching and Editing

From 1995 to 1996, he taught for WritersCorps in San Francisco. Since 1999 Beachy has taught in the MFA Program at the

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The ...

. He is the Prose Editor of the literary journal Your Impossible Voice, which has featured the work of

Jessica Hagedorn Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn (born 1949) is an American playwright, writer, poet, and multimedia performance artist. Biography Hagedorn is an American of mixed descent. She was born in Manila to a Scots-Irish-French-Filipino mother and a Spanish ...

Horacio Castellanos Moya Horacio Castellanos Moya (born 1957) is a Salvadoran novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Life and work Castellanos Moya was born in 1957 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to a Honduran mother and a Salvadoran father. His family moved to El Salva ...

, Stacey Levine, and Daniel Borzutzky, among others.

Bibliography

* ''The Whistling Song'' (fiction, WW Norton, 1991) * ''Distortion'' (fiction, Harrington Park Press, 2000; Rebel Satori Press, 2010) * ''Some Phantom / No Time Flat'' (two novellas, Suspect Thoughts, 2006; Verse Chorus 2013) * ''boneyard'' (fiction, Verse Chorus, 2011)

References

External links

Stephen Beachy's website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beachy, Stephen 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers Living people 1965 births 21st-century American novelists University of San Francisco faculty Place of birth missing (living people) American male novelists 21st-century American male writers American Mennonites Mennonite writers LGBT Mennonites