Josip Novakovich

Josip Novakovich (born 1956 in Daruvar, Croatia) is a Croatian-American writer of fiction, narrative essays, and the long-running craft textbook Fiction Writer's Workshop, one of the most widely used creative writing texts in American MFA and undergraduate programs. He emigrated from Yugoslavia to the United States at age twenty and continued his education at Vassar College (B.A.), Yale University (M.Div.), and the University of Texas at Austin (M.A.).

Fiction Writer's Workshop (Story Press, 1995, revised second edition 2008) treats fiction as a craft to be practiced rather than a mystery to be revered. Each chapter takes apart a different aspect of fiction (setting, character, point of view, plot, dialogue, voice, beginnings, endings, revision) and pairs instruction with more than one hundred writing exercises, each with a stated purpose and self-critique questions. The expanded edition includes the full text of eight model short stories paired with analysis to show the techniques in practice. The book is widely assigned alongside or in place of Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction.

His own fiction includes the novel April Fool's Day (HarperCollins, translated into ten languages), four story collections (Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust, Yolk, Salvation and Other Disasters, and Heritage of Smoke), and three collections of narrative essays including Apricots from Chernobyl and Plum Brandy: Croatian Journeys. His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize, and the O. Henry Prize Stories.

He has received the Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Award, an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and in 2013 was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. He has taught at Nebraska Indian Community College, Bard College, Moorhead State University, Antioch University Los Angeles, the University of Cincinnati, Penn State University, and is now a professor of creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal.