DeNiro, Alan 1973-

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DeNiro, Alan 1973-

PERSONAL:

Born 1973, in Erie, PA; married Kristin Livdahl (a writer). Education: College of Wooster, B.A., 1995; University of Virginia, M.F.A., 1997.

ADDRESSES:

Home—St. Paul, MN. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Fallon Minneapolis (advertising agency), Minneapolis, MN, proofreader. Writing instructor; founder of Taverner's Koans; founding member of Ratbastards (writers' and poets' collaborative).

WRITINGS:

The Black Hare (chapbook; poems), Small Garlic Press (Chicago, IL), 1998.

Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead: Stories, Small Beer Press (Northampton, MA), 2006.

Author of chapbook The Atari Ecologues; work represented in collections, including Rabid Transit: New Fiction by the Ratbastards (chapbook); contributor of fiction to periodicals and literary journals, including Crowd, One Story, Fence, Minnesota Monthly, Blue Moon Review, Artful Dodge, Graham House Review, 3rd Bed, and Polyphony; contributor of poetry to journals, including Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Bird Dog, and Willow Springs; reviewer for Rain Taxi; writer of text-based computer games; author of a blog.

SIDELIGHTS:

Alan DeNiro is a writer and poet and founder of Taverner's Koans, a Web site for creators of experimental poetry. The site is also home to the Ratbastards, a collaborative cofounded by DeNiro that publishes the "Rabid Transit" series of chapbooks.

DeNiro's poems have been collected in a number of chapbooks, and sixteen of his previously published stories comprise his first collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead: Stories.

In reviewing the collection for the Strange Horizons Web site, Adam Roberts noted that "they pick out a narrow path between two bramble-thickets of descriptors. One thicket is pretension, and is made up of adjectives such as: aleatory, oblique, oneiric, lyric-mode, postmodern. The other thicket is infuriation and includes: random, confusing, self-indulgent, repetitive, obfuscatory. There's also, in that latter thicket, a tiny thorn named split-infinitives, but though that snagged on my tender skin it may not bother more robust readerly epidermises. And the path between? The path, though wayward, is not always overgrown, and it is paved with poetry, insight, and beauty."

The stories offer alternate histories, futuristic imaginings, and observations on consumerist totalitarianism. The title story finds the narrator falling in love with a girl who is a dolphin-human hybrid. "Child Assassin" is about a professional baby killer. A Diagram Web site reviewer called the volume "an impressive and darkly humorous debut collection." Booklist contributor Ray Olson commented: "Refreshing, imaginative, funny-scary stuff."