Barry Pearce

Barry Pearce’s parents immigrated to the U.S. and settled on the South Side of Chicago, where he and his six siblings grew up. He graduated from Northwestern University – the first in his family to attend college – with a degree from the Medill School of Journalism, and later earned an MFA in creative writing from New Mexico State University. He has won the Nelson Algren Award Grand Prize, an Illinois Arts Council Award, The Mercedes Delos Jacobs Book Prize, and the Keith Wilson / Joe Somoza Poetry Prize. He has ghostwritten 18 nonfiction books, everything from memoir to titles on business and real estate investing. He was the executive editor of New Homes Magazine for 20 years and before that, edited The Real Estate Profile. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Chicago Tribune, The Cimarron Review, The Colorado Review, Grand, Other Voices, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. He lives in Chicago where he works as a ghostwriter and occasional teacher.