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On September 25, 2007, the MacArthur Foundation named Stuart Dybek a 2007 Fellow, noting that his work “dramatizes how a new storytelling tradition takes shape; his writing borrows from the literature and iconography of the Old World yet emerges from the New World-from the speech and streets and music and movies that feed the imaginations of contemporary American communities.” The very next day, he received the Rea Award for the Short Story. “The beauty of these two awards,” said Andre Dubus III, who served on the Rea Award jury, “is that it gives Stuart well-deserved time to create. And that benefits all of us.”

In his work, Dybek explores the memories and legends of his upbringing in the Polish neighborhoods of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. He grounds the reader in the physicality of those places, while at the same time daring to blur the boundary between the real and the dreamlike. Time does not often move in a straight line, but seems to spiral outward, and to double-back on itself, in ways that feel fluid and organic rather than planned. “The state you want to get to,” he says, “is surrender. When you’re controlling... you’re never going to find the accidents, which is what art is all about.”

He is the author of three books of fiction: Childhood and Other Neighborhoods (1980), The Coast of Chicago (1990), and I Sailed with Magellan (2003); and two collections of poetry: Brass Knuckles (1979) and Streets in Their Own Ink (2004). His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Poetry, among others. In addition to the MacArthur Fellowship and the Rea Award, Dybek has received honors including a PEN/Malamud Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Stuart Dybek holds a BS and an MA from Loyola University, and received his MFA from the University of Iowa. In 2006, after over 30 years teaching at Western Michigan University, he had a homecoming of sorts, becoming Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He spoke with us over lunch at the Palm Court Grill in Spokane.