Michael Noll

Michael Noll is the author of The Writer's Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction and numerous short stories, including "The Tank Yard," included in the 2016 Best American Mystery Stories anthology.

He earned his MFA in Fiction Writing from Texas State University, studying under Tom Grimes, Debra Monroe, and Tim O'Brien. After graduation, he served for four years as the writer-in-residence at the Katherine Anne Porter House, helping to organize a reading series featuring writers such as Charles Baxter, Percival Everett, Carole Maso, Francine Prose, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Robert Stone. Michael saw firsthand the different teaching approaches used by the writers, and he put them to use in undergraduate creative writing classes for a decade at Texas State and in workshops sponsored by the Austin journal American Short Fiction and Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

He currently works as Program Director for the Writers' League of Texas, organizing and planning more than 50 writing classes a year and one of the largest agents and editors conferences in the country. He moderates a monthly panel discussion on craft and publishing that often draws more than 100 people to BookPeople in Austin and, in its recorded form as the Writers' League of Texas podcast, has been listened to by thousands. His blog, Read to Write Stories, is used in more than two dozen MFA, undergraduate, and high school writing classes across the country and is read by more than 8000 people every month.