You know, you can talk about race, you can talk about sex, you can talk about your biopsy. But when you get into class, people kind of clench up.

His first story collection CivilWarLand in Bad Decline was a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award. A professor at Syracuse University Saunders won the National Magazine Award for fiction in 1994 1996 2000 and 2004 and second prize in the O.