Alan Heathcock
American writer
Alan Heathcock (born March 8, 1971) is an American fiction writer. He is the author of the acclaimed short story collection VOLT (2011) and the dystopian novel 40 (2022).
Early life, education, and career
Heathcock grew up in the Chicago suburb of Hazel Crest, Illinois and attended the University of Iowa, where he graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. He earned Master of Fine Arts degrees from both Bowling Green State University (1996), and Boise State University (2003). Heathcock teaches in the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program at the University of Nevada, Reno. He lives in Boise, Idaho.
Notable works
Heathcock's first collection of short fiction, VOLT, was published with Graywolf Press in 2011. VOLT was selected as an Editor's Pick for both The New York Times Book Review and The Oxford American; a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, as well as hailed by many critics as one of the best books of 2011, including Publishers Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, Salon.com, and GQ. VOLT also includes the story "Peacekeeper," which first appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, and won Heathcock a National Magazine Award in 2006. A 2013 short film adaptation of "Smoke," one of the stories in VOLT, was directed by Cody Gittings and Stephen Heleker.
Heathcock's debut novel, 40, was published in 2022 by MacMillan to mostly favorable but some mixed reviews.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alan Heathcock” as american writer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16193629. VIAF identifies the subject as 85880950. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2011, 2022 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alan Heathcock” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.