Background George Saunders was born December 2, 1958 and raised on the south side of Chicago. In 1981 he received a B.S. in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He worked at Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, NY as a technical writer and geophysical engineer from 1989 to 1996. He has also worked in Sumatra on an oil exploration geophysics crew, as a doorman in Beverly Hills, a roofer in Chicago, a convenience store clerk, a guitarist in a Texas country-and-western band, and a knuckle-puller in a West Texas slaughterhouse. After reading in People magazine about the Master's program at Syracuse University, he applied. Mr. Saunders received an MA with an emphasis in creative writing in 1988. His thesis advisor was Doug Unger.

Teaching

He has been an Assistant Professor, Syracuse University Creative Writing Program since 1997. He has also been a Visiting Writer at Vermont Studio Center, University of Georgia MayMester Program, University of Denver, University of Texas at Austin, St. Petersburg Literary Seminar (St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer 2000), Brown University, Dickinson College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges. He conducted a Guest Workshop at the Eastman School of Music, Fall 1995, and was an Adjunct Professor at Saint John Fisher College, Rochester, New York, 1990-1995; and Adjunct Professor at Siena College, Loudonville, New York in Fall 1989.

Influences His early influences include Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, and Kalil Gibran; and later, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Isaac Babel, and Joseph Conrad. He studied with Tobias Wolff and was also influenced by Raymond Carver. He currently reads Nikolai Gogol, Samuel Beckett, and George Orwell; as well as many of his contemporaries (see Other Authors link). He was also influenced by the comedian Steve Martin, Monty Python, and Dr. Seuss. ********************************* My First Literary Crush The books famous people loved in college. From Slate.com, Nov. 15, 2005. George Saunders: The book I was obsessed with in college was You Can't Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe, a six-foot-five raving romantic of a writer, who supposedly wrote the book on the top of his refrigerator, and would just toss the pages on to the floor, dozens of pages a night, to be gathered up by the cleaning lady next day. But that's not why I liked him. I liked him because he was epic and broken-hearted and sloppy and emotional and in love with the world and wrote sentence after sentence beginning with the word "O," as in "O Brooklyn, harbinger of cruel autumn," or "O mourned and never-to-be-regained Time" (though I'm pretty sure I just now made those two up). I loved his big-heartedness and the way, apparently, he had just taken his life and made a huge book out of it. But damn, his life was so much bigger and romantic than mine! He felt things so much more deeply, knew so many more Tragic Figures! So, soon I had developed the habit of pacing tragically around and phrasing my life in his terms: "O bitter Seven-Eleven of broken love, which, mourning, how many times have I paced by you, mad visions trumpeting my ravening brain, because of the lovely (FILL IN NAME OF GIRL) lost, no more to be Regained?" Finally I realized that my life didn't GO in that voice, and left the book behind, but sadly, with an affection I still feel. O Wolfe!

Currently
	He is married and has two children. His favorite charity is a project to educate Tibetan refugee children in Nepal. Information on this can be found at http://www.tibetan-buddhist.org/index1.html