CHAPMAN
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ichard Bausch, the nationally acclaimed novelist and short-story writer, lives with his wife, Lisa, in a pretty Craftsman house on a sunny street in Old Towne Orange. From it, he can easily stroll to the cafes and restaurants on the Orange Plaza, or walk to his office on the Chapman University campus. It’s a long way from his old stomping grounds in Memphis, Tenn., where he not only held the Moss Chair of Excellence in the writing program at the University of Memphis until Chapman lured him away last spring, but also launched one of the nation’s most respected writing workshops, for which he hand-picked participants from the local community. It’s a major success that he hopes to re-create at Chapman. “No writer has a finer insight into the delicate matters of the human heart than Richard Bausch,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler has said. Bausch is the author of 11 novels, including Hello to the Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night and The Last Good Time, which was made into a film by actor/director Bob Balaban. He’s a celebrated master of the short-story form, and his work has been widely anthologized. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire and other magazines. His honors include two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Bausch joins a distinguished writing faculty in Chapman’s Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences that includes novelist/screenwriter Mark Axelrod, pioneering steampunk-fiction author Jim Blaylock (see profile in the spring 2012 issue), nonfiction writer Tom Zoellner, poet Anna Leahy, novelist Ryan Gattis and others. “Richard’s arrival here certainly raises the profile of Chapman’s creative writing program,” says Axelrod, professor of English and director of Chapman’s John Fowles Center for Creative Writing. “He comes to us not only with great credentials, but he also comes with a number of great
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Someone Like Us Master storyteller Richard Bausch launches an innovative writing workshop at Chapman. By Mary Platt
Though he came to a career in writing with “no ambitions,” Richard Bausch has authored 11 novels and several collections of short stories. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.
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CHAPMAN MAGAZINE