Chuck Wachtel is the author of JOE THE ENGINEER (Morrow, 1983), winner of the PEN/HEMINGWAY citation, which is currently being made into an independent film.

He is also the author of THE GATES (Viking, 1994), a collection of stories and novellas entitled BECAUSE WE ARE HERE (Viking, 1996); as well as five collections of poems and short prose, his current title being WHAT HAPPENS TO ME (Hanging Loose Press, 2000). Most recently his work has appeared in Camille Paglia’s BREAK, BLOW BURN: Forty-three of the World’s Best Poems. His short fiction, poetry, essays and translations have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY: 26 Contemporary Writers and How They Work, (Norton, 2004); SIGNALE AUS DER BLEECKER STREET, a bi-lingual anthology of contemporary German and American Writers, (Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, Germany, 2004); and DAEDALUS: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2004).

He desires fiction to respond to the world around us, and to be influenced by it, as well as by existing forms and method, and is a faculty member in the Creative Writing graduate program at N.Y.U.