Douglas Light [1](born Indianapolis, Indiana) is an award winning American novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer. His story collection, Girls in Trouble, won the 2010 AWP Grace Paley Prize [2] for short fiction. It will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2011. His second novel, Where Night Stops, will be published in the fall 2011. His debut novel East Fifth Bliss won the 'Popular Fiction' section of the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award presented by the Independent Book Publishers Association.[3] East Fifth Bliss [4] was filmed in 2010. The film stars Golden Globe winner Michael C. Hall of Dexter fame, Lucy Liu, and Brie Larson. Light received a 2010 NoMAA grant for his novel Where Night Stops. His short stories have appeared in the 2003 O. Henry Prize Stories anthology,[5] the 2003 Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology, failbetter, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Guernica Magazine, Narrative, and other magazines.
He graduated from The City College New York and lives in New York City.
Light left Indiana in 1991, moving to Seattle just as the grunge scene was taking hold. He fell upon hard times and soon found himself homeless. Slowly, he reestablished himself.
In 1995, he moved to New York City into a six-flight walk-up building in the East Village.
While attending the City College of New York for his MA in Creative Writing, he studied under Frederic Tuten and was award the Goodman Loan Fund Grant Award, the Danielle and Larry Nyman Family Project Award, and the Irwin and Alice Stark Short Fiction Prize for his writing.
He was a finalist for the 2002 James Jones First Novel Fellowship.
His first published short story, "Three Days. A Month. More." received a 2003 O. Henry Award and was selected for inclusion in the 2003 Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology, which was edited by Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith.
Light published his first novel, East Fifth Bliss, in the spring of 2007.