As a finalist for The Story Prize, Joe Meno joins the company of two widely known authors--Jhumpa Lahiri and Tobias Wolff. While Meno may seem like a newcomer to some, however, he has already published four novels and has another, The Great Perhaps, coming out in May. Not only that, Demons in the Spring is his second story collection. That's impressive output from the 34 year-old Chicagoan, who also writes plays.Meno's work has inspired a couple of short films--one of a story, "Our Neck of the Woods," and the other of his first novel, Tender as Hellfire--as well as this trailer (which unabashedly appropriates Wes Anderson's style) for his most recent novel, The Boy Detective Fails.
There will be more on Joe Meno to come in the weeks leading up to The Story Prize event on March 4. For now, here's a bibliography of his work (in backwards chronological order):
The Boy Detective Fails (Akashic Books, 2006)
Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir: Short Stories (Triquarterly, 2005)
Hairstyles of the Damned (Akashic/Punk Planet, 2004)
How the Hula Girl Sings (Akashic, 2001)
Tender as Hellfire (Akashic, 1999)