About Me

I’m an assistant professor in the Institute For Writing Studies at St. John’s University in New York.  My novel Love on the Big Screen is out now and tells the story of a college freshman whose understanding of love has been shaped by late-eighties romantic comedies.  The script adaptation of that novel won the Grand Prize of the Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival Screenplay Competition.

My novel-in-stories Horseshoe weaves thirteen tales of guilt, violence, adultery and redemption.  Think:  Flannery O’Connor’s “Misfit” fiction meets Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.  My work has appeared in numerous scholarly and literary publications.  that will be published by the indie press Cherokee McGhee.

I grew up in Indiana pretty obsessed with basketball and romantic comedies, especially Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything. When I was in middle school, my buddy “Tank” and I went to Weird Science four nights in a row.   After spending four years of mostly sitting on the bench of the Olivet Nazarene University basketball team, I coached the sport for nine years in Indiana and North Carolina.  One of my big coaching highlights came down in North Carolina when I was an assistant coach for a team that beat a team Chris Paul played for.  That team won the state title.  Thanks for the ring boys!

I earned an M.A. in English Education from the University of North Carolina Charlotte and had a life-transforming experience when I participated in the National Writing Project’s summer institute there.  I emerged from it full of the desire to write.  After that, I went to Milledgeville, Georgia–home of Flannery O’Connor–and earned an MFA in fiction.

Be great if you befriended me on Facebook followed me on Twitter, or you can write to me at…

william.torgerson@gmail.com