Tad Bartlett

Tad Bartlett is a fiction writer, essayist, and recovering poet. He was born in Ankara, Turkey; raised in Selma, Alabama; and married into New Orleans, Louisiana. Tad received his undergraduate degree in theater and creative writing from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama; and a law degree from Tulane University. He earned his MFA in fiction from the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans, where he was a reader for Bayou literary magazine. He lives in New Orleans, where he practices law and works on various writing projects, including a collaborative novel with fellow Peauxdunquian J.Ed. Marston, a new novel project, and various short stories and essays. He also serves as the Managing Editor of Peauxdunque Review.

Publications:

“Coconut Boats,” part of interdisciplinary, international art exhibit Telephone (April 10, 2021) (poetry)
“John Lewis’s America,” Massachusetts Review‘s “Our America” series (July 19, 2020) (essay)
“When the Storm Comes,” Massachusetts Review (Vol. 61, Issue 1, May 2020) (short story)
- “10 Questions” interview.
“Flock Apart,” Litbreak (Nov. 12, 2019) (short story)
“Elysian Fields,” New Limestone Review (April 1, 2019) (short story)
“When Czechoslovakia Was Still a Country,” Green Briar Review (Issue 5.1, October 13, 2018) (short story)
- Pushcart-nominated by Pushcart Board of Contributing Editors
“Marchers’ Season,” Storylandia (Issue 26, August 2018) (novella)
- The stories surrounding “Marchers’ Season.”
“Boone’s Farm from a Sprite Bottle,” Crack the Spine (Issue 234, March 21, 2018) (short story)
“The Coca-Cola Lady of New Orleans,” The Bitter Southerner (February 7, 2018) (non-fiction/sponsored content)
- A word from me about sponsored content.
“Porches,” Gris-Gris (January 2018) (short story)
- Pushcart-nominated by Pushcart Board of Contributing Editors
“Kings of the Confederate Road,” The Bitter Southerner (November 28, 2017) (collaborative long-form essay/photography feature with Maurice Carlos Ruffin and L. Kasimu Harris)
- Anthologized in Bitter Southerner Reader, Vol. 4 (June 2020)
- Included on New York Times’ “What We’re Reading” list (December 1, 2017)
- Featured by Southern Poverty Law Center (December 7, 2017)
- Included in The Bitter Southerner‘s top-ten list of best stories from 2017 (December 19, 2017)
- Tad’s out-takes/visual sketchbook from the essay
“Not So Lonely After All,” Write Here/Write Now (Bird’s Thumb writing process blog) (February 2017) (essay)
“Anti-Heroically Yours,” Bird’s Thumb (February 2017) (short story)
“The Memory Gardener,” The Baltimore Review (October 2016) (short story)
“Riding in Cars at Night,” Eunoia Review (August 2016) (short story)
“My Time With You,” Chautauqua Literary Journal (June 2016) (essay/memoir)
- Pushcart-nominated by Chautauqua editors
- Listed by Best American Essays 2017 as a “Notable” essay
“The Non-Artists,” Mulberry Fork Review (Issue 5; April 2016) (short story)
“Birmingham Breakdown,” The Stockholm Review of Literature (January 2016) (short story)
“In the Details,” Bird’s Thumb (October 2015) (short story)
“Head Space,” The Writing Disorder (September 2015) (essay/memoir)
- Pushcart-nominated by Writing Disorder editors
“Tree Houses,” The Carolina Quarterly (online; April 2015) (short story)
“Addressing You,” Euphony Journal (Spring 2015) (short story)
- Anthologized in Monday Nights: Stories from the Creative Writing Workshop (UNO Press, 2016).
“Through the Valley of the Shadow of Home,” Bird’s Thumb (Issue 3; Oct. 2014)
- Interview here
- Reprinted in Double Dealer (2014) (short story)
“Hung Over,” Rappahannock Review (Issue 1.2; Feb. 2014) (short story)
- Interview here
“new century/old century,” Double Dealer (2013) (poem)
“Family Dinner,” Oxford American website (July 31, 2013) (essay)
“Recovery Landmarks: Music After the Storm,” Oxford American website (Dec. 20, 2012) (essay and photography)
“Food and Recovery: Reclaiming After the Storm,” Oxford American website (Oct. 29, 2012) (essay and photography)
“Food and Memory: A Barbecue Homecoming,” Oxford American website (Aug. 6, 2012) (essay and photography)
“Food and Writing: Talking Mushrooms with Terroir-ists,” Oxford American website (June 18, 2012) (essay and photography)

Competition/award placings:

Pushcart-nominated by member of Pushcart Contributing Editors board for work published in 2018.
Included on list of 2016 Notable Essays and Creative Non-Fiction by Best American Essays (“My Time With You,” Chautauqua Literary Journal)
Pushcart Nominee, creative non-fiction (“My Time With You,” Chautauqua Literary Journal, June 2016)
Pushcart Nominee, creative non-fiction (“Head Space,” The Writing Disorder, Sept. 2015)
2017 Short List, short story category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (“Thousand-Year Oak”)
2017 Finalist, short story category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (“Elysian Fields”)
2015 Short List, novella category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (“Marchers’ Season”)
2015 Short List, novel category (with collaborator, J.Ed. Marston), William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (The Truth Project)
2015 Finalist, Samuel Mockbee Award for Non-fiction (UNO) (“My Time With You”)
2014 Winner, Ernest and Shelley Svenson Award for Fiction (UNO) (“Superpowerless”; now titled “Anti-Heroically Yours”)
2014 Finalist, short story category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (“Flock Apart”)
2014 Finalist (with collaborator, J.Ed. Marston), novel category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (The Truth Project)
Feb. 2013 Honorable Mention, Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers (“Riding in Cars at Night”)
2013 Finalist, short story category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (“Riding in Cars at Night”)
2012 Finalist, short story category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (“Addressing You”)
2011 Finalist, poetry category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (“new century/old century”)
2010 Finalist, essay category, William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition (“Mythmakers”)

Conferences, Alliances, Readings, etc.:

Founding member, Peauxdunque Writers Alliance
Faculty/panelist, Tennessee Williams Festival, 2019
Steering Committee, Words & Music Conference, 2018
Faculty/panelist, Tennessee Williams Festival, March 2017
Reading from Monday Nights anthology (Jefferson Parish Library), February 2017
Invited faculty reader/panel moderator, Words & Music Conference, 2010-2017, 2019
Our Own Private Peauxdunque reading (Rosa F. Keller library), July 2015
To the Blighthouse reading (Alvar Branch library), February 2015
GCACWT Conference, short story readings, March 2014 and March 2015
Faculty/panelist, Louisiana Book Festival, 2014
UNO Gold Room Reading Series, 2013 and 2014
Co-coordinated the (original) “Yeah You Write” reading series in October 2012, April 2014, and August 2016, featuring readings by M.O Walsh, Mat Johnson, Bill Loehfelm, Amanda Boyden, Joseph Boyden, Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly, Benjamin Percy, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Gian Smith, Terri Shrum Stoor, jewel bush, Emilie Staat, Cassie Pruyn, John Barry, Kelly Harris-DeBerry, and Nicholas Mainieri.
MelaNated-Peauxdunque Sunday Shorts Reading Series (Red Star Galerie), April 2013
Attended Yokshop Writers’ Conference, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 (Oxford, MS)
Attended AWP 2018 (Tampa, FL)
Attended Oxford American Summit, 2011 (Petit Jean, AR)

Random:

So this isn’t very “writer bio,” but I’ll give this a shot, one of those social media memes that used to circulate when social media was something different-seeming than it is today. Six random things about me, each one premised on numbers:

I’ve been in five bands (not counting the Westside Middle School band or the Selma City Schools orchestra), two of which survived the first rehearsal. One that never had a name; the others were Deaf Children At Play, Waffle, 3DGOW, and Crazy Fuckers From Planet Q. As the first (and only) song I wrote for that first band that didn’t have a name, I wrote a long set of lyrics about growing up an outsider in the South, set vaguely to the tune of Lou Reed’s “Last Great American Whale.” That was the beginning of the writing, really, for me.
I’ve played eight different musical instruments, three of them serviceably well (piano, trumpet, cello), the other five in a recreationally foolhardy way (mandolin, guitar, percussion, harmonica, and this strange homemade electrified string instrument thing my friend Dave built and christened the “bang-a-wang,” featured on several 3DGOW songs).
I’ve had five diagnosed concussions (playground, soccer, car wreck, soccer, soccer, clumsiness), likely at least three others undiagnosed (but it gets so hard to remember).
Before I eventually wound up in law school and then in the MFA program at UNO, I’d had thirteen different paying jobs (newspaper darkroom tech, weekly newspaper columnist, clerk at small-town two-person law firm, busboy/dishwasher, graveyard shift DJ, paper mill manual labor crew, one-hour photo lab tech, free-lance copy writer, free-lance photographer, graduate teaching assistant, associate in medical equipment sales, magazine copy editor, online managing editor).
I never took another math class after eleventh grade, or another science class after twelfth grade. Somehow placed out of those requirements in college and never looked back. Well, until my three children started bringing home math and science homework.
I’ve lived in eight towns. Ankara, Turkey; Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; Branson, Mo.; Thomasville, Al.; Selma, Al.; Mobile, Al.; Tuscaloosa, Al.; and Metairie, La.