Benjamin Anastas

Benjamin Anastas is the author "An Underachiever's Diary," called the "funniest, most underappreciated book of the 1990s" (Very Short List), "bitterly funny" (The New Yorker) and a "masterpiece of controlled failure" (The New York Post). The novel was recently re-released in paperback by the Dial Press. His second novel, "The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance" (FSG), "sparkles with a dry wit and a generous understanding of human complexities" (Publishers Weekly) and was named a New York Times Notable Book.

His next book, the memoir "Too Good to Be True," will be published in October of 2012.

Anastas's prize-winning short fiction has been published in The Paris Review, GQ, The Yale Review and Story magazine, and he has contributed articles, essays and reviews to Bookforum, the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and Granta. His essay "The Foul Reign of Emerson's 'Self-Reliance'" will be included in The Best American Essays 2012. A former editor at the literary magazine Grand Street and interim director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, Anastas currently teaches writing at Columbia University and the Bennington Writing Seminars.