Email: bontly@uwm.edu
Literary Agent:
Emilie Jacobson
Curtis Brown, Ltd.
10 Astor Place
New York, NY 10003
Current position:
Professor of English, University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Education:
B.A. (Honors), University of Wisconsin-Madison, l96l
Research Student, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, England, 1961-62
Ph.D. in English and American Literature, Stanford University, l966
Dissertation Topic: Henry James and "the Aesthetics of Discretion"
Honors and Awards:
Rotary International Fellowship, l961-62
Stanford University Fellowship, l962-63
Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship, l965-66
Maxwell Perkins Commemorative Award, 1966 (for The Competitor--see
publications)
Fulbright Senior Lectureship to West Germany, l984
First prize, short fiction, Council for Wisconsin Writers, l975,
1989, 1997
Wisconsin Arts Board New Work Award, 1990
Christopher Latham Scholes Award (for outstanding service and
contributions to Wisconsin literature), Council for Wisconsin
Writers, 1998.
Publications; Novels:
Short Stories:
26 stories published in Esquire, McCall's, Redbook, Boy's Life, Denver
Quarterly,
Sewanee Review, Cream City Review, Northeast, Fiction Midwest, Wisconsin
Review, and other magazines.
Anthologized in:
The Secret Life of Our Times
(Gordon
Lish
editor),
Doubleday, l973,
Creative Choices (David Madden, ed.), Scott, Foresman & Co., 1978,
` The Journey Home (Jim Stephens, ed.), North Country Press,
1989,
The Uncommon Touch (John L'Heureux, ed.), Stanford University
Press, l989.
Closings: Great American Writers on the Art of Selling (Michael
Tronnes,
ed.) St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Wisconsin Fiction (Kyoko Mori and Ron Rindo, eds.), Transactions
of the
Wisconsin
Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998.
Essays and Reviews:
Published in Sewanee Review,
Cream City
Review,
Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, Studies in English Literature, Wisconsin Studies
in
Literature,
and elsewhere.
Teaching Areas:
Courses at UWM and elsewhere
Introduction to Creative Writing
Fiction Workshops, intermediate and advanced
Freshman Seminars: The Ghosts of Literature; Working with Words
Survey of British Literature: Romanticism to Modern
Introduction to Modern Literature (British and American; fiction, poetry,
drama)
The Art of the Novel (special topics; history, craft, theory)
The Art of the Short Story (history, craft, theory)
The American Short Story (19th and 20th Centuries)
American Literature, 1865-1940
American Literature, 1940-Present
Major Figures: Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov
Graduate Seminars: Narrative Craft and Theory: Language and Style
Fabricating Reality
Character in the Novel
Beginning a Novel
Graduate supervision:
over 40 M.A. theses and 15 Ph.D.
dissertations
directed; service on many other graduate committees.
Shorter courses, workshops, lectures:
Crafting the Thriller,
Writing the Novel: the First Chapter,
Hatching A Plot: Where Do Stories Come From?,
1000 Writers, or 15 Things I Know About Writing Fiction.
Public Readings:
at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the
Milwaukee
Public
Library, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-LaCrosse, UW-Superior,
UW-Oshkosh, University of Arizona, Radford University, Stanford
University,
Rhinelander School of the Arts, Gorey Arts Centre (Ireland), Giessen
University
(Germany), and elsewhere.