Floyd Skloot is a creative nonfiction writer,
poet, novelist, and critic.He has published fifteen books
and won three Pushcart Prizes,a
PEN USA Literary Award, two Pacific NW Booksellers Association Book Awards, two
Oregon Book Awards, the ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of the Year Silver Award, the Emily Clark Balch Prize from
Virginia Quarterly Review, and a Glenna Luschei
Award from Prairie Schooner.He was a finalist for the
Barnes & Noble Discover Award in 2003, for his memoir In the Shadow of Memory, which was
also a finalist for the PEN Award for the Art of the Essay.
His work has been included in The
Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, Best Spiritual Writing,
Best Food Writing, The Art of the Essay,
and In Fact: The Best of Creative
Nonfiction, among other anthologies.
Floyd was born in Brooklyn,
NY,
in 1947, and moved to Long Beach,
NY,
ten years later. He graduated from Franklin
& MarshallCollege
with a B.A. in English, and completed an M.A. in English at Southern
Illinois University, where he studied with the Irish poet Thomas
Kinsella. From 1972 until becoming disabled
in 1988, Floyd worked in the field of public policy in Illinois,
Washington,
and Oregon.
He began publishing poetry in 1970, fiction in 1975, and essays in
1990. In May, 2006 he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters
degree from Franklin
& MarshallCollege.
An Oregonian since 1984, Floyd moved from Portland
to rural Amity when he married Beverly Hallberg
in 1993. They lived in a cedar yurt in the middle of twenty hilly acres
of woods for 13 years before moving back to Portland.
Floyd's daughter, the writer Rebecca Skloot, lives in Memphis,
TN,
where she teaches creative writing at the University
of Memphis
and works as a freelance writer. She has completed her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,
forthcoming from Crown Books in February, 2010, and her work has been included in
the Best Creative Nonfiction,Best Food Writing
and Women’s Best Friend
anthologies as well as appearing regularly in the NY Times Magazine,
Popular Science, O: Oprah’s Magazine and elsewhere.
Her boyfriend, writer and actor David Prete,
recently completed his second book of fiction and teaches writers how to
improve their public reading skills. Floyd's stepson, Matthew
Coale, lives with his wife and two children
in Vancouver,
Washington.
Floyd's current projects include new poems for a seventh collection,
which he hopes to complete by 2010, and new essays.
A short story of his appears in Akashic
Books’ new anthology Portland
Noir.
