Wendell Mayo is not a native of Eastern Europe. He was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. But his repeated travels to Eastern Europe have provided him with a unique perspective of the region, a theme that emerges in his writing.
A Timber Hill Journal review of Mayo’s most recent collection of short fiction, “The Cucumber King of Kédainiai,” called him “an expert at capturing awkward clashes between people of different nationalities, and we see repeatedly in the book a type of character he’s written about before with great pathos: the well-intentioned but out of place American, who usually ends up being thrown over by all that he cannot predict or understand.”
Mayo will read excerpts from “The Cucumber King of Kédainiai” on Thursday, April 7, when the Creative Writers Reading Series returns to Penn State Behrend. His 6 p.m. reading and the reception that will precede it are free and open to the public. Both events will be held in the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel.
Mayo is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and was a Fulbright Scholar in Lithuania. He has published four short story collections, including “Centaur of the North,” winner of the Aztlan Prize and a finalist in the Associated Writing Programs Award Series in Short Fiction.
More than one hundred of his stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Yale Review, Harvard Review, Manoa, Missouri Review, Prism International, Threepenny Review, Indiana Review and Chicago Review. He currently teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University.
The Creative Writers Reading Series is produced by Penn State Behrend’s B.F.A. in Creative Writing degree program with support from the Clarence A. and Eugenie Baumann Smith Fund. For additional information, call 814-898-6108 or visit behrend.psu.edu/readings.