Have you ever wanted to live in another world? To travel, meet new people and generally get lost in the romance of life? This is the job of writer Michael Gills, who is rather good at it.
Gills is a first generation college student, who currently teaches three classes for the University of Utah Honors College. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas, a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Ph.D. in fiction writing from the University of Utah. Gills said “writing yourself into shape takes time” and that is what he has dedicated his time to.
Gills is currently being honored as part of the Celebrate U showcase of extraordinary faculty achievements. He was selected for his third short fiction “The House Across From the Deaf School,” which is a series of short stories about Joey Harvell. Gills described Harvell as “a composite of people I’ve known, those I’d like to have known but didn’t and the myth-made real aspects of the life I’ve known.”
Gills “grew up in the rural south and heard [his] first storytelling in duck hunt clubs and fishing shacks and around fires where folk spun the most amazing tales, where the woodsmoke and whiskey on their breaths mixed with the aroma of fresh cooked game.”
The author writes everything from essays and novels to poetry and short fiction. He has won several awards: the Pushcart Prize, the Utah Arts Prize and was a Yellow Shoe Fiction Series Finalist. He was also voted a Distinguished Honors Professor in 2012.
His inspiration comes as “a flash of something out of the periphery and there I’ll be, way before first light, on the trail, until finally I’ll see the thing whole.” He writes in the mornings, beginning the process on a typewriter and then transposing the work to a computer for further revision or “re-seeing,” as he phrases it. “But the beating heart is that initial draft, flawed with vitality,” he explained.
Gills urges young writers to “write daily. Don’t wait for inspiration. Have a routine and stick with it. Stay in the room. Persist.”
His books can be purchased at The King’s English Bookshop. Titles include:”The Death of Bonnie and Clyde”, “Emergency Instructions”, “Go Love”, “The House Across From the Deaf School”, “Why I Lie: Stories” and “White Indians”.