Mark Axelrod is a Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of English at Chapman University, Orange, California. Prior to teaching at Chapman, he taught at the University of East Anglia, UK and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. A graduate of both Indiana University (BA, MA) and the University of Minnesota (PhD). For 13 years he has been the Director of the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing for which he has received 4 National Endowment Arts Grants. He is a two-time recipient of a United Kingdom Leverhulme Fellowship for Creative Writing (University of East Anglia, Edinburgh University), a three-time recipient of the Alliance Française National Writing Award, has written 19 works of fiction, published five, Capital Castles (Pacific Writers Press, 2000),Cloud Castles (Pacific Writers Press, 1998), Cardboard Castles (Pacific Writers Press, 1996)and Bombay California (Pacific Writers Press, 1994)) and Borges’ Travel, Hemingway’s Garage (fc2, 2005) and has published over thirty stories in literary journals.

His Pan-Euro-American trilogy titled, The Posthumous Memoirs of Blase Kubash, based on the character Braz Cubas created by the 19 th century Brazilian novelist, Machadode Assis, has been anthologized in The Reading Room/4 published by Great Marsh Pressand is currently being considered for publication with Marick Press. He is also writing a series of short fictions, the first of which, Borges’ Travel, Hemingway’s Garage received excellent reviews in the New York Times, the Georgia Review and Publisher’s Weekly,among others, and will be published in fall, ’09 in Spanish by Thule Ediciones, Barcelona asBorges’ Viajes, Hemingway’s Talleres. He has written three other volumes, Balzac’s Coffee,DaVinci’s Ristorante; Nietzsche’s Café, Axel’s Charhouse and Bartleby’s Books, Gatsby’s Caféand is working on two more volumes. He has written other short fiction as well includingDante’s Foil & Other Sporting Tales and The Apotheosis of Aaron. He has been published innumerous literary journals including the Iowa Review and the New York Quarterly and was acontributor to the former New York avant-garde magazine, Splash Magazine. Among theawards he has won for his fiction include: the Tim McGinnis Award (University of Iowa);Camargo Foundation Fellowship in Fiction Writing, Cassis, France (2); the Maxwell PerkinsAward for Fiction Writing, New York, NY; a Bush Foundation Fellowship for Fiction Writing, St. Paul, MN; and an Award for Experimental Writing (Indiana University). He has also wonan award from Western Illinois University for his play, Ti Amo Lucia Olivetti and hascompleted a trilogy of new one-act plays titled: Taxing Tales, that includes: Van Gogh’sAudit, Superman in America and Bruno Arlt at the Grille Café. He has translated three works:Xavier de Maistre’s novella, Un voyage autour de ma chambre, Balzac’s play, Mercadet, andBaudelaire’s novella, La Fanfarlo. He is currently at work on a book of memoirs titled,Posthumous Papers of a Living Writer which includes reminiscences on people from Beckettto Borges, Letterman to August Wilson. His critical books include, The Politics of Style in theFiction of Balzac, Beckett and Cortázar (Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 1990); The Poetics of Novels(Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 1999).

From 2005-2007 he was a judge on the Fulbright Commissions Panel for Creative Writing from 2005-2007. In spring, 2002, he was honored as a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Pitzer College, Claremont, CA and was a featured speaker at the Hugh C.Hyde Living Writers Series at San Diego State University in October, 2003. In 2005, he wasa guest professor of Creative Writing-Fiction at Pomona College, Claremont, CA and was invited to return in spring, 2006. In June 2005, he was invited to teach at the 65 th Annual Indiana University Writers Conference in Bloomington. In November, 2008, he was invited by the Museum of Latin American Art, Buenos Aires, to participate in the 1 st Annual FILBA International Literary Festival there where he read from his fiction and sat on a panel Résumé devoted to creative writing. He is currently working on a literary anthology devoted to hunger with contributions from such writers as J.M Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Doris Lessing, Luisa Valenzuela, Ariel Dorfman,Martin Amis, and JP Donleavy just to mention a few.A corresponding member of the international film organization, CILECT, he is a practicing screenwriter and has won awards for his writing from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the Writers Guild of America, East; the Screenwriters Forum(University of Wisconsin); and the Sundance Institute. He has written over twenty screenplays and teleplays and his adaptation and co-production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “An Author’s Mother” won awards from the Scottish Association of Filmmakers, the London International Film & Video Festival, and the Festival Internacional de Video do Algarve,Portugal. He has taught or conducted screenwriting seminars and workshops throughout Latin America, Europe, and the United Kingdom as well as the United States including stintsat: the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba [the schoolfounded by García Márquez]; the Goethe Institute, Santiago, Chile (with Antonio Skármeta[author of Il Postino]); with both SICA, the Cinematographer’s Union of Argentina, andProyectos Culturales in Buenos Aires; at the National Film School of Denmark, Copenhagen[with Mogens Rukov (screenwriter of Celebration]); the University of Art and Design,Helsinki, Finland; the Grimme Akadamie, Cologne; the Flemish Film Academy, University ofLeuven, Leuven, Belgium; the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium; PILOTS,Barcelona, Spain; Edinburgh University, Scotland; the University of Belgrano, Buenos Aires;the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK; Columbia College, Chicago; IndependentFeatures North, Minneapolis; Western Washington University, Bellingham; Elmira College, Elmira, NY; Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA; University of Tennessee, Knoxville; andParis Writers Workshop, Paris. For four years, he was a regular visiting adjunct professor ofscreenwriting at the Hamburg Media School, Hamburg, Germany. In May, 2006, he was invited by the United States Embassy, Berlin to speak on screenwriting and to conduct screenwriting lectures at a number of German universities inMunich, Berlin and Cologne among other places. In August, 2006 he was invited to lectureat UNIACC in Santiago, Chile and returned there in August, 2007, 2008 and 2009. PENasked him to be the lead judge for the 2006 Best Original Screenplay Award. In addition, hehas been invited to conduct screenwriting lectures at the John Huston School of Film andDigital Media, Galway, Ireland as well as at the Baltic Film School, Tallinn University,Estonia; UIAH, Helsinki, Finland; and Black Coffee Films, Mumbai, India. In August, 2008 hewas invited to teach at ARCOS Film School in Santiago, Chile at the invitation of the United States Embassy, Santiago, Chile and gave talks in Buenos Aires at the invitation of the United States Embassy, Buenos Aires. In September, 2008 he was invited by UNIACC Film School,Santiago, to participate in a major Latin American screenwriting conference sponsored by IBERMEDIA. His film books include: Aspects of the Screenplay (Heinemann, 2001);Character & Conflict: Cornerstones of Screenwriting (Heinemann, 2004); and I Read It at the Movies: Screen Adaptation (Heinemann, 2006). A fourth book titled, The Scene and How toWrite It is slated for publication by Focus Press in 2011 and a fifth book, Selling Short:Screenwriting for the New Millennium is being considered for publication in 2012. His latest scripts include Seven Days in Santiago, with Chilean director, Edgardo Viereck, and EncinoStory, an adaptation of the Ozu film, Tokyo Story, with American director, David Anspaugh(Hoosiers).

Show full bio

Hide full bio