Staff Profile
Dr Sam Reese
Senior Lecturer
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Originally from Aotearoa New Zealand, I am a critic, short story writer, and currently a senior lecturer at the York Centre for Writing.
My first monograph, The Short Story in Midcentury America, won the Arthur Miller Centre First Book Prize, and I have published widely on midcentury American fiction, with a particular focus on Mary McCarthy, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Yates. I am currently working on a wide-ranging new project: Theory of the Short Story.
I am also a respected jazz critic. My second book, Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness, was named by JazzTimes as a 2019 book of the year, and I have edited and written a critical introduction to the notebooks of legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, which will be published in 2024.
My short stories have won prizes including a Katherine Mansfield award, the Lazuli Literary prize, and a Brittle Star award, and have been collected in two volumes: Come the Tide (2019) and on a distant ridgeline (2021), which the TLS called a “thoughtful and moving collection” written, “with great poise.”
- School – School of Humanities
- Email – s.reese@yorksj.ac.uk
- Research - View my work in RaY
Teaching
I teach on the Creative Writing course at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
I am interested in supervising research and/or creative projects that focus on the short story form, and projects that draw on the world of music, or musical aesthetics.
I teach on the following courses:
- BA in Creative Writing
- MA in Creative Writing
- MFA in Creative Writing
- PhD in Creative Writing
Research
I completed my funded PhD on the music and short fiction of Paul Bowles at the University of Sydney in 2015, and have published a number of articles on the aesthetic of Bowles’ short fiction, and his relationship to surrealism.
My main area of research, as well as of creative practice, is the short story form. My first monograph, The Short Story in Midcentury America, won the Arthur Miller Centre First Book Prize, looking at the relationship between form, politics, and cultural criticism in mid-twentieth century America. I have published articles on a number of midcentury writers, including pieces on Ralph Ellison’s aesthetics of invisibility (in Mosaic), the short fiction and cultural criticism of Mary McCarthy, and the use of types in Richard Yates’ short fiction (in American Literature).
I am now working on an expansive theoretical project, Theory of the Short Story, which ranges from Charles Chestnutt to Lydia Davis and Diane Williams.
My other main area of research is jazz. My second critical work, Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness, considered the relationship between jazz and literature (often casually or loosely construed) through the framework that jazz musicians themselves often invoke: that of conversation. I was particularly interested in the way that jazz musicians turned to literature to express something concretely to which their music could only allude, while at the same time drawing on literary resources to build complex instrumental music.
Most recently, I have worked closely with the archives of legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins at the New York Public Library, transcribing and editing a collection of his notebooks, and writing a critical introduction. This book is forthcoming with NYRB in 2024.
I am also a practising short story writer; my stories have won prizes including a Katherine Mansfield award, the Lazuli Literary prize, and a Brittle Star award, and have been collected in two volumes: Come the Tide (2019) and on a distant ridgeline (2021), which the TLS called a “thoughtful and moving collection” written “with great poise.”
