Toutonghi, Pauls 1976-

views updated

Toutonghi, Pauls 1976-

PERSONAL:

Born July 4, 1976, in Seattle, WA. Education: Cornell University, M.F.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brooklyn, NY. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Author. Has worked variously as burrito roller, pizza delivery driver, waiter in a retirement community, vintage baseball jersey vendor, project editor for Atlantic Coast Jet, telemarketer, sandwich maker, college professor, shipping clerk for a medical supply store, and a research assistant for the Complete Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pushcart Prize, 2000, for story "Regeneration."

WRITINGS:

Live Cargo (short stories), Livingston Press (Livingston, AL), 2003.

Red Weather (novel), Shaye Areheart Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor of fiction to periodicals, including the Boston Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, One Story, Glimmer Train, Book, and Terminus, and other writing to Sports Illustrated, Crab Creek Review, and the Yemen Observer.

SIDELIGHTS:

Pauls Toutonghi worked at a number of jobs over the years, but they were all simply means of earning an income while he pursued his main love: writing. Toutonghi's short fiction has appeared in various publications, and his story "Regeneration" won the 2000 Pushcart Prize when Toutonghi was merely twenty-three years old. A collection of his short stories, Live Cargo, includes works about a range of locations and time periods dating back as far as World War I and covering everything from Seattle to New York, Cairo to Russia, taking their cue from Toutonghi's own colorful Latvian/Egyptian ethnic heritage. His debut novel, Red Weather, examines the immigrant experience, focusing on a fifteen-year-old Soviet Latvian boy who lives in Milwaukee with his parents. The tale shows the family's new life against a backdrop of late-1980s Soviet history. Writing for Booklist, Keir Graff felt that the ending dragged, but otherwise called the book "a first novel of uncommon poise and power." A contributor for Publishers Weekly, however, asserted that the book's "character details, evocation of working-class Milwaukee and tales of the old country effectively walk the line between realism and absurdity."