Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain at the 2012 Texas Book Festival.

Ben Fountain (b. Chapel Hill, North Carolina) is an American fiction writer currently living in Dallas, Texas. He was won many awards including a PEN/Hemingway award for Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for his debut novel Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk.

Pre-writing career

Fountain earned a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980, and a law degree from the Duke University School of Law in 1983.^[1] After a brief stint practicing real estate law at Akin Gump in Dallas, Fountain in 1988 quit the law to become a full-time fiction writer.^[2]

Writing career

He is the author of Brief Encounters With Che Guevara, a collection of short stories. He has won numerous awards and inclusion of his work in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best (2006).^{[3] [4]}

Fountain's latest novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, was released in early May 2012.^[3][4] The Oscar-winning screenwriter of Slumdog Millionaire, Simon Beaufoy, is adapting the novel into a screenplay, a new Film4 project in collaboration with The Ink Factory, a U.S. production company. As yet, no director is attached.^[5]

Awards and honors

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• 2002 Texas Institute of Letters Short Story Award ^{[citation needed]}
• 2004 Texas Institute of Letters Short Story Award ^{[citation needed]}
• 2005 Texas Institute of Letters Short Story Award ^[6]
• 2004 Pushcart Prize^[7]
• 2005 O. Henry Award ^[8]
• 2006 Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction ^[9]
• 2007 O. Henry Award ^{[citation needed]}
• 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Brief Encounters with Che Guevara^[9]
• 2007 Whiting Writers Award^[10]
• 2012 National Book Award (fiction), finalist, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk^[11]
• 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards International Author of the Year shortlist for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk^[12][13]
• 2012 Good Reads Choice Awards 2012, Best Fiction finalist for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk^[14]
• 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
• 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award (fiction), Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk^[15][16][16]
• 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (fiction), Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk^[17][18]
• 2013 Dayton Literary Peace Prize (fiction), runner-up, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk^[19]
• 2013 Chautauqua Prize, shortlist, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk^[20]

Bibliography

• Brief Encounters With Che Guevara
• Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

References

External links

• All-story.com
• Late Bloomers: A discussion of his career by Malcolm Gladwell