Les Edgerton

Les Edgerton is an American author of nineteen books, including two about writing fiction: Finding Your Voice (Writer's Digest Books) and Hooked (Writer's Digest Books). He also writes short stories, articles, essays, novels, and screenplays.

Les Edgerton
Born1943
Odessa, TX
OccupationWriter
ResidenceFt. Wayne, Indiana
NationalityUnited States
SubjectWriting
Website
www.lesedgerton.net

Awards and recognition

Edgerton's fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, O. Henry Award, Edgar Allan Poe Award (short story category), Jesse Jones Award, PEN/Faulkner Award, the Derringer Award, and the Violet Crown Book Award. One of his screenplays was a semifinalist for the Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Program, a finalist in the Austin Film Festival Heart of Film Screenplay Competition, and a finalist in the Writer's Guild's "Best American Screenplays" Competition. His short fiction has appeared in Houghton Mifflin's Best American Mysteries of 2001, "The South Carolina Review", Kansas Quarterly, Arkansas Review, North Atlantic Review, "High Plains Literary Review", Chiron Review, Murdaland, and many others. His thriller, "The Bitch" was named the Best Thriller of 2011 by Preditors & Editors, and was nominated for Best Thriller of 2011 by Spinetingler Magazine (Legends category).

Biography

Les Edgerton was born in Odessa, Texas. He grew up in Freeport, Texas and in and around South Bend, Indiana. He served four years in the U.S. Navy. Later, he was sentenced to two to five years in Pendleton Reformatory for second-degree burglary. Four years after getting out of prison, he attended Indiana University South Bend, where he was elected Student Body President, was sports editor for the campus newspaper, and was head of the student athletic association, which began the school's first basketball team. He later earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.

Later Edgerton entered a period of his life he refers to as a years-long odyssey, during which he:

  • Sold and used drugs
  • Worked for an escort service for older, wealthy women in New Orleans
  • Sold life insurance
  • Worked as a headhunter for a firm specializing in recruiting executives for businesses dealing with electronic warfare
  • Was a sports reporter
  • Won 16 state championships for hairstyling, a skill he learned in prison
  • Co-hosted a cable-television show about fashion in New Orleans
  • Made a television commercial
  • Acted in a movie
  • Was homeless and eating out of a dumpster
  • Went through several marriages
  • Attended A.A. meetings
  • Began writing seriously

For more than twenty years he has lived in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He has a wife, a son, two grown daughters, and a grandson. Today, in his own words, ". . . he's all respectable and such, and you can invite him into your home and when he leaves you don't have to worry about counting the silverware." Edgerton's current activities include working his private online creating writing group and coaching writers privately on their novels.

Works
  • Bomb
  • Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go, Writer's Digest Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-58297-514-6
  • Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality into Your Writing, Writer's Digest Books, 2003, ISBN 978-1-58297-173-5
  • Surviving Little League: For Players, Parents, and Coaches, Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004, ISBN 978-1-58979-067-4
  • Monday's Meal: Stories, University of North Texas Press, 1997, ISBN 978-1-57441-026-6
  • The Death of Tarpons, The University of North Texas Press, 1996, ISBN 978-1-57441-011-2
  • Perfect Game USA, McFarland Publishing, 2008.
  • The Perfect Crime, StoneGate Ink, 2011
  • Just Like That, StoneGate Ink, 2011
  • Gumbo Ya-Ya, Story Collection, Snubnose Press, 2011
  • The Bitch, Bare Knuckles Press, 2011
  • Mirror, Mirror, YA, StoneGate Ink, 2012
  • Three books on business/hairstyling from Thomson Publishing.

Forthcoming from New Pulp Press in 2013, The Rapist.

gollark: Probably. Governments just love illegalizing things for bad reasons.
gollark: Banning alcohol was tried and failed because of that. Banning weed... happened, seemingly hasn't prevented people getting/using it anyway (but resulted in loads of people pointlessly going to prison), and is beginning to be reverted.
gollark: Well, yes. I don't think it's a good reason, but I think it's *why*.
gollark: It's not a justification. It's a reason.
gollark: Because alcohol is easier to make (I think) and more ingrained in our culture.

See also

References
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