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Jason Brown received
his MFA from Cornell

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and was a Wallace Stegner
fellow and Truman Capote

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fellow at Stanford.

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He has won many fiction prizes,
and you can find his work

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in publications, such as The
Best American Short Stories,

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Harper's, and The Atlantic.

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He is currently at
work on a novel.

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Jason Brown taught my first
fiction writing workshop.

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Initially, the most fascinating
thing about him was his shoes.

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Whether he wore shorts
or a suit jacket,

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his shoes were always a
pair of bright red crocs.

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I became fascinated
by these shoes.

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While I learned techniques
to bring readers directly

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into characters' heads, I also
learned that a bit of color

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can make any outfit interesting.

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As this semester
continued, however, I

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did begin to pay more
attention to his words

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than to his wardrobe.

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I learned a lot from
Jason Brown's lectures,

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but I really became
impressed with him

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after I read his collection
of short stories driving

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the heart.

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Because I became captivated
enough to read the whole book

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in one long sitting and
could envelop the characters

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experiences into my own,
I knew that my professor

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not only understood but
embodied the devices

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he was trying to teach.

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Brown has recently
published another collection

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of short stories, Why the Devil
Chose New England for His Work.

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These short stories all
set in or near Vaughn,

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a small New England
town followed

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the lives of the usually
extraordinary townspeople.

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And like the red
crocs, each story

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unveils something startling in
an otherwise direct setting.

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Jason Brown writes
with a vividness

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that allows me to see his
characters and settings not

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only at critical
moments in the plot

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but also at lazy
river floating times,

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or hand-holding in the library
times, or baking cookies times.

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No matter how big
the action gets,

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the characters
are always bigger.

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They could be your neighbor,
your grocer, even you.

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Vaughn may be a small town,
but each of these stories

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incorporate a shock of red.

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Though he may not be
wearing his crocs tonight,

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I'm glad to present Jason Brown.

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