Alan Ziegler

Alan Ziegler has two books forthcoming in 2025-26: Based on a True Life: A Memoir in Pieces, and The Incomplete (a novel set in 1968-69). His most recent books are Short: An International Anthology of 500 Years of Short-Short Stories, Prose Poems, Brief Essays, and Other Short Prose Forms (editor); Love at First Sight: An Alan Ziegler Reader; and The Writing Workshop Note Book. Previous books include The Swan Song of Vaudeville: Tales and Takes; The Green Grass of Flatbush (stories); So Much To Do (poems); and The Writing Workshop, Volumes I and II.

Ziegler is the recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Word Beat Fiction Book Award (selected by George Plimpton), four PEN Syndicated Fiction awards, a CAPS (Creative Artists in Public Service) fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts grants for Some literary magazine and Release Press, which he co-edited. He is a recipient of Columbia’s Presidential Teaching Award, and he chaired the Writing Program from 2001-2006; currently he is Director of Pedagogy. Ziegler received a B.S. from Union College and a Masters in Creative Writing from City College of New York, where he studied with Kurt Vonnegut, William Burroughs, and Joel Oppenheimer.

Alan’s current manuscript is Based on a True Life: Flash Memoirs and Squibs.