Maurice Carlos Ruffin is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of New Orleans. He’s also a member of several writing collectives, including the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance and the Melanated Writers of New Orleans.

Maurice’s debut novel, We Cast a Shadow, has been acquired by One World, Chris Jackson’s imprint at Random House, and will be published in early 2019.

Maurice’s short story, “The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You,” was selected by Rachel Kushner as the winner of the 2014 Iowa Review Award for fiction, and appeared in The Iowa Review in December 2014. His novel-in-progress, All of the Lights (an earlier version of We Cast a Shadow), won the gold medal for that category in the 2014 William Faulkner-William Wisdom writing competition, and an excerpt appeared in Callaloo. In addition, an essay called “A History of Motion” was published by Cicada Magazine, a young adult journal, in early 2015; his short story, “The Boy Who Would Be Oloye,” appeared in the spring 2015 issue of The Massachusetts Review; and his story, “Ms. Anne’s Garden,” appeared in the May 2015 issue of New Delta Review.

His short story, “The Anchor Song,” was named the winner of the 2014 Short Fiction Contest at So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art! and was published in that journal’s Fall 2014 issue. His short story, “Heathen,” appeared in issue two of The Knicknackery in the summer of 2014, and was named a Pushcart Prize nominee by that journal. “Motion Picture Making,” another short story, was published by Writing Tomorrow magazine in June 2014. Redivider Journal published Maurice’s short story, “Catch What You Can,” in issue 11.2. “Heroes and Villains” appeared in Issue 5 of 94 Creations. Maurice has also been published in the Apalachee Review (“Mercury Forges”/fiction, and “Cheating the Muse”/non-fiction), Regarding Arts & Letters (“Mr. Face”/fiction), and the University of New Orleans’s Ellipsis (“And Then I Was Clean”). A short story called “The Pie Man” appeared in the South Carolina Review (Vol. 45, No. 1).

“The Pie Man” also received the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop’s 2011 Ernest Svenson Fiction Award. He received the Creative Writing Workshop’s 2013 Joanna Leake Prize for Fiction Thesis for his short story collection “It’s Good to See You’re Awake.” His short story “Catch What You Can” received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train in the May 2013 Short Story Award for New Writers Contest. Maurice’s essay, “Beginning of This Road,” appears in Rebecca Solnit’s Unfathomable City, a collection of maps and non-fiction about post-Katrina New Orleans published by the University of California Press.

Maurice has attended a number of literary conferences including the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (2011, 2012), Faulkner Words and Music Literary Conference (2004, 2008-2012), Tennessee Williams Festival (2010-2012), Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers Conference (2011-2012), and BookExpo America Conference (2005). Maurice served on the faculty of the 2010-2013 Words and Music Conferences, presenting fiction on conference themes. In June 2011, Maurice was selected as a participant in the inaugural Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers in Petit Jean, Arkansas. He participated in the first annual Tennessee Williams Festival Writers Workshop led by Zachary Lazar in November 2012. He also attended the Yokshop Writer’s Conference (Oxford, MS) in 2013, participating in a three-day workshop.