Gary Gildner is a contemporary, mid-western, American writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Gildner was born in West Branch, Michigan in 1938 and grew up in Flint, MI. He earned a B.A. and M.A. from Michigan State University. He is an English professor at Drake University in Iowa and has been a visiting professor or writer-in-residence at other educational institutions, including Michigan State University, within the US. Two of his sabbatical years were spent in Warsaw, Poland and Paris, France. Gildner is a respected writer whose works include novels, short stories, memoirs, poetry collections, and poems published in anthologies. He has won numerous awards, including The 1976 Theodore Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest, the 1977 William Carlos Williams Poetry Prize from New Letters, the coveted Pushcart Prize, and two NEA Fellowships. Gildner's short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories in both 1985 and 1986. Gildner’s works are accessible and genuine renderings of his love of story telling.