Joe Sacksteder is the author of the short story collection Make/Shift (Sarabande Books), the novel Driftless Quintet (Schaffner Press), and the album of audio collages Fugitive Traces (Punctum Books). He has his PhD from the University of Utah and teaches multi-genre, multi-disciplinary classes with a focus on fiction, aesthetics, and genre hybridity. His experimental horror novel, Hack House, is forthcoming from Astrophil Press.
Courses Taught
ENCW 241: Scary Stories
ENCW 231: Writing About Music and Writing Musically
ENCW 201: The Love Story
ENCW 101: Introduction to the Literary Studio
CORE 120: The Mindful Writer
Publications
Books & Albums
Hack House, Astrophil Press, forthcoming
Driftless Quintet, Schaffner Press, 2019
Make/Shift, Sarabande Books, 2019
Fugitive Traces, Punctum Books, 2017
Fiction (partial list)
“Living Room Practice Room,” “Duet for Piano Soloist,” “Cult of the Defingered,” West
Branch 96, 2021
Tunneling, Miracle Monocle 14, 2020
“Make, Shift,” Salt Hill 41, 2018
The Unquestionable Sincerity of Fire Alarms, Juked, August 25 th , 2018
“The Vitriolic Megaphone,” Booth 12, 2018
Enough Sealant to Pool the Concavity, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, April 28 th , 2017
“Your Contribution,” North Dakota Quarterly 83.2&3, 2016
“Prep Work” (excerpt from the novel Hack House), Midwestern Gothic 22, 2016
Earshot–Grope–Cessation, Passages North 35, 2014; The Other Stories Podcast, Episode 202, 2019
“What people have against sports,” Fourteen Hills 19.2, 2013
“Nepenthe,” Booth 4, 2012; reprinted Booth 10, 2017
“Portage des Morts,” Big Muddy 11.2, 2012
“The Worst You’ll Ever Feel,” Midwestern Gothic 1, 2012
“How to put on hockey equipment,” Aethlon: the Journal of Sport Literature 26.1, 2010
“combed thunder,” filling Station 45, 2009
Creative Nonfiction
“Deceased Celebrity Encounter—A Hyperethical Account,” Miracle Monocle’s ”You Blew It” micro-anthology (forthcoming)
“Significance,” Western Humanities Review (forthcoming)
“Six Years Listening to Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums,” Iron Horse Literary Review 25.1
“Attempt Forgets Itself,” South Dakota Quarterly 57.2
Review of Joe Sacksteder’s Review of Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto, DIAGRAM 21.4, 2021
Last Map, The Offing, May 30 th , 2021
“Ghost Notes,” New South, Spring/Summer 2019
33 Microsummaries of Recent Lit Journal Stories, Booth, May 4 th , 2018
“Ghost Notes,” Denver Quarterly 52.1, 2017
Hockey in movies that aren’t about hockey, Hobart, October 2 nd , 2017
Tuesday Night Bieber, Hobart, January 1 st , 2016
Detroit New Hollywood Vegas, The Rumpus, September 26 th , 2014
Opportunity is Missed by Most People, Hobart, June 30 th , 2014
Becoming the Soup Nazi, Hobart, January 6 th and 13 th , 2014
Poetry
“Slough Off,” Dunes Review 25.2
Three Little Critically-Endangered Birds, Ninth Letter, Summer 2018
“Where the healthy pets go,” Bateau 6.1, 2016
Sacred Doubts and Casebook for Disinterested Friendship, Dreginald 6, 2015
“Cover the Earth,” “Every Kiss Begins with Kay,” “Drive One,” New Delta Review 4.2, 2014
“Rotten luck, Mayfly Baby,” Rio Grande Review, Fall 2011
“Mangroves of the Sierpe,” Hawai’i Review 73, 2010
“Possibility,” “And once it’s done you can’t take it back,” Penumbra, Spring 2010
“The Horse Trails,” Mississippi Review, Spring 2010
Critical Writing
Werner Herzog’s Ecstatic Truth in the Age of American ‘Truthiness’, Full Stop, November 30th, 2023
Against Quirky Writing, Michigan Quarterly Review 61.1
6 posts, Muriel Rukeyser – A Living Archive, Guest Blogger, November 2012–February 2013
Reviews (partial list)
Eric Blix’s The Prodigious Earth (novel), Heavy Feather Review, September 11th, 2023
Mukethe Kawinzi’s saanens, nubians, one lamancha (poetry chapbook), DIAGRAM 23.3, 2023
Melanie Rae Thon’s As If Fire Could Hide Us (stories) Barrelhouse, April, 2023
Ulysses’ Dream (art exhibition), The Offing, February 24th, 2023
Craig Dworkin’s Helicography (novel), The Rupture 118, 2022
Bess Winter’s Machines of Another Era (stories), Kenyon Review, January 27 th , 2021
Dennis James Sweeney’s GHOST/HOME (essay), Quarterly West 100, 2020
Noam Dorr’s Love Drones (essays), Full Stop, December 31 st , 2019
Labyrinthine Cinema: Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto (film installation), Columbia Journal, July 22 nd , 2019
Gabe Habash’s Stephen Florida (novel), Green Mountains Review Online, September 13 th , 2018
Molly McCully Brown’s The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded (poetry), Kenyon Review Online, April 11 th , 2018
Jesse Ball’s Census (novel), Washington Independent Review of Books, March 27 th , 2018
Michael Mejia’s TOKYO (novel), The Rupture 99, October 2018
Christine Hume and Jeff Clark’s Question Like a Face (essay, photography), DIAGRAM 17.6, 2017
One More Time With Feeling (film), The Rumpus, September 22 nd , 2016
Palo Alto (film, stories), The Rumpus, July 11 th , 2014
Lance Olsen’s Theories of Forgetting (novel), Heavy Feather Review, June 18 th , 2014
“Ethan Rutherford’s The Peripatetic Coffin” (stories), Rain Taxi 18.3, 2013
“Robert Lopez’s Kamby Bolongo Mean River” (novel), Puerto del Sol 45.2, 2010
Audiovisual
A Very Remote Place, Herzog: Origins (sound poem, poem), Quarterly West 81, 2014
“Earshot–Grope–Cessation” (film, reading, piano performance), Passages North, 2014
A Sense of Irony, The Power of Suggestion, The Last Poetry of Capitalism (sound poems), Textsound 13, 2012
Fantasy Enough (sound poems, film), Sleeping Fish 11, 2012
Scratch Where It Itches (sound poem), The Rupture 31, 2012
Joe Sacksteder has a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah, where he served as managing editor of Quarterly West. He is the author of a story collection, Make/Shift (Sarabande Books), winner of the 2017 Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature, and a novel, Driftless Quintet (Schaffner Press), winner of the 2018 Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature. His album Fugitive Traces is available from Punctum Books. His writing has appeared in Salt Hill, Ninth Letter, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, New South, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. His next novel, Hack House, is forthcoming from Astrophil Press. Formerly the Director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts, he has served as Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Sweet Briar since Fall 2022.
For more information, please visit my personal website.