daniel prazer

Daniel Prazer is the assistant artistic director for Story Week, his third year at that post. He graduated with an MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago, and as soon as he stops this nonsense long enough, he plans on sending it out. His creative nonfiction has appeared in Fictionary, Hair Trigger 30, Reservoir, flashquake.org and New City; an excerpt of his novel-in-progress appeared in Open to Interpretation, published by the Fiction Writing Department and UK’s Bath Spa University. He’s the former managing editor of Fictionary, now the Online Editor, was an editor for Hair Trigger and The Story Week Reader, helped to launch the Fiction Writing Department’s Publishing Lab’s Web site, and has taught outreach workshops for seniors at Mather Lifeways. He works with the Columbia College Center for Teaching Excellence and Critical Encounters program, maintaining and designing the programs’ Web sites.

Before moving to Chicago, he spent two years covering the county and business beats as a reporter at the Chillicothe Gazette, covering everything from traffic accidents to the 2004 presidential campaign—including scoring sit-down interviews with John Kerry, John Edwards, and Max Cleland. In Pike County, Ohio, sits a 3,700+ acre uranium enrichment plant. He covered the cleanup efforts (including the discovery of Beryllium dust contamination) and the United States Enrichment Corporation’s move to restart production.

He lives in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago—close enough to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s house to be woken up by news helicopters for days after his arrest—with his wife Ann.

Contact him via e-mail at dprazer @ gmail.com.