Neel Ryan Tucker
Stories from the rural South and Southwest
Work
Winner of the 2024 Penmen Review Grand Prize in Short Fiction.
- A Mississippi ditch, a wrecked Fairlane, and a sheriff with a grudge — Train a Comin’ doesn’t ease up from there
About
Neel Ryan Tucker comes out of the dry edges of Texas and the deep South. He works in the long tradition of rural American witness-fiction, where land is the dominant force and revelation comes quiet, if at all. His work favors an austere clarity—spare and pressure-built—driven by the ways some folks witness the land without naming what it does to them.Tucker’s work has been praised by Tim O’Brien, and he is the recipient of the 2024 Penmen Review Grand Prize in Short Fiction for “Train a Comin’.”He holds a BA in English and is currently an MFA candidate at Texas State University, where he is at work on a linked collection spanning drought-struck West Texas from the 1930s through the 1970s. He lives and writes in San Marcos, Texas.
Contact
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