About

Morgan Talty

Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation and the author of the novel Fire Exit (Tin House, 2024) and the national bestselling story collection Night of the Living Rez (Tin House, 2022).

Night of the Living Rez won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, the New England Book Award for Fiction, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize. It was a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Story Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award.

Fire Exit is a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and has been longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Dublin Literary Award, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. It was named a TIME Top 10 Fiction of 2024, a New Yorker Best Book of 2024, and an ALA Notable Book.

His work has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Narrative Magazine, Harvard Review, Oprah Daily, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Never Whistle at Night and three consecutive years in The Best American Short Stories.

Talty co-directed, wrote, and acted in the documentary short Belongings, which premiered at Hot Docs 2023 and was named a Vimeo Staff Pick and Short of the Week.

Talty is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Maine, where he teaches fiction, literature, and Indigenous studies. He is also on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA Program. He serves as Senior Prose Editor for The Massachusetts Review.