| Olen Steinhauer grew up in Virginia, and has since lived in Georgia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Massachusetts, and New York. Outside the US, he's lived in Croatia (when it was called Yugoslavia), the Czech Republic, Italy, and now Hungary. He also spent a year in Romania on a Fulbright grant, an experience that helped inspire his first five books.
In these places, he's worked as a dishwasher, librarian, assembly-line worker, hotel laundry worker, and English teacher.
After earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Olen received his MFA from Emerson College in Boston, studying with such fine writers as Gail Mazur, Christopher Tilghman and Andre Dubus III.
He has published stories and poetry in various literary journals over the years. His first novel, The Bridge of Sighs (2003), the start of a five-book series chronicling Cold War Eastern Europe, one book per decade, was nominated for five awards.
The second book of the series, The Confession, garnered significant critical acclaim, and 36 Yalta Boulevard (The Vienna Assignment in the UK), made three year-end best-of lists. Liberation Movements (The Istanbul Variations in the UK), was listed for four best-of lists and was nominated for an Edgar Award for best novel of the year.
The final novel in the series, Victory Square, is being published this year, 2007.
Olen is a fan and sometime-practitioner of film. The 1999 documentary, Central Square, produced with Krista Steinhauer, received a production grant from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also put together Contemporary Nomad, a group-blog of published writers.
Direct any inquiries to Stephanie Cabot at The Gernert Company, 136 East 57th Street, NYC 10022, scabot AT thegernertco.com.
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(image: Slavica Pilic, 2004)
Dick Adler, of the Chicago Tribune says: "[E]very now and then a writer of thrillers or mysteries emerges who deserves to be compared with the best [of writers of "literature"]. The list of names is short, each tied to a territory or period: [...] Olen Steinhauer, who makes the communist side of that war understandable."
Books:
The Bridge of Sighs
The Confession
36 Yalta Boulevard
(UK: The Vienna Assignment)
Liberation Movements
(UK: The Istanbul Variations)
Victory Square
Shorter Pieces (selected):
"The Lobster" - Quarterly West
"The Umlaut" & "To Straighten a Line" (poetry) - Beacon Street Review
"Evidence" - Manoa
"The Piss-Stained Czech" - Dublin Noir (2006 anthology)
"Investment in Vevey" - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
"Hungarian Lessons" - Expletive Deleted (2007 anthology)
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