Overview

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Miami University and went on to receive a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing from George Mason University. He published his first book at age 26, while still in graduate school. He has taught at Miami, George Mason, George Washington, and John Carroll University, and is currently the Burroway Professor of English. He was formerly the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

Winegardner has won grants, fellowships and residencies from the Ohio Arts Council, the Lilly Endowment, the Ragdale Foundation, the Sewanee Writers Conference and the Corporation of Yaddo. His books have been chosen as among the best of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, the New York Public Library, and USA Today. His work has appeared in GQ, Playboy, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, DoubleTake, Family Circle, The Sporting News, Witness, Story Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ladies Home Journal, Parents and The New York Times Magazine. Several of his stories have been chosen as Distinguished Stories of the Year in The Best American Short Stories.

He is an alumnus of the Ragdale Foundation.

Analysis and criticism

According to a press release from Putnam: In a major acquisition, G. P. Putnam's Sons Executive Editor Dan Conaway secured North American rights to The Godfather's Revenge, the capstone to the Corleone family saga, which began with Mario Puzo's landmark novel and was carried forward in Winegardner's 2004 New York Times bestseller, The Godfather Returns. The Godfather's Revenge was written by Winegardner, based on Puzo's original characters.

"It's staggering to contemplate the legacy of the Godfather films and novels," says Dan Conaway. "They have had a deeper, broader and more lasting impact on the fabric of contemporary culture than has any other such franchise in the past 50 years. It's fitting, then, that The Godfather's Revenge overlays the resonant mythology of the Corleone family onto the most vexing real-life mystery of our age, with a storyline that explores the role organized crime may have had in the assassination of a charismatic young President."

Publications

• Winegardner, Mark. Elvis Presley Boulevard: From Sea to Shining Sea, Almost. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.
• Winegardner, Mark. Prophet of the Sandlots: Journeys with a Major League Scout. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.
• Fireovid, Steve, and Mark Winegardner. The 26th Man: One Minor Leaguer's Pursuit of a Dream. New York: Macmillan Pub. Co, 1991.
• Winegardner, Mark. The Veracruz Blues. New York: Viking, 1996. ISBN 0670866369 OCLC 32894928
• Winegardner, Mark. We Are What We Ate: 24 Memories of Food. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1998.
• Winegardner, Mark. Crooked River Burning. New York: Harcourt, 2001. ISBN 0151002940
• Winegardner, Mark. That's True of Everybody: Stories. New York: Harcourt, 2002.
• Winegardner, Mark, and Mario Puzo. The Godfather Returns. New York: Random House, 2004. ISBN 1400061016 OCLC 56936487
• Winegardner, Mark. The Godfather: The Lost Years. London: William Heinemann, 2004.
• Winegardner, Mark, and Mario Puzo. The Godfather's Revenge. New York: Putnam, 2006. ISBN 0399153845 OCLC 71288749

[ Source: Wikipedia ]