Mick White
  • Instructional Assistant Professor

Research Interests

  • 20th Century American Literature
  • Creative Writing
  • Creative Writing Pedagogy
  • Fiction
  • Memoir
  • Story Structure
  • Theories of Place

Educational Background

  • Ph.D., Texas A&M University, 2010
  • M.A., Texas A&M University, 2005
  • B.A., University of Texas, 2003

Awards & Honors

  • Nominated for Pushcart Prize, 2015 (for “July 17, 1978,” published in Still: The Journal)
  • Elected to Texas Institute of Letters, 2014
  • Eichhorn Fellowship, Pittsburg State University, 2013
  • Texas Book Award (Finalist), for That Demon Life, Writers’ League of Texas, Fall 2010
  • Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction (Finalist), for Long Time Ago Good, Texas Institute of Letters, Spring 2010
  • Gival Press Novel Award, 2008
  • Ralph A. Johnston Memorial Fellowship (Dobie-Paisano Fellowship), Texas Institute of Letters and the University of Texas at Austin, 1998-1999

Selected Publications

  • Professed - white
    White, Lowell Mick. Professed: A Novel. Slough Press, 2013

    Professed is a novel filled with the struggles and rivalries and oddities and weirdnesses of contemporary American higher education–favor-dodging, ex-girlfriend avoiding, grade-dreading, plagiarist-busting, dissertation-reading, officemate annoying, litter-box spilling, book-stealing, unprofessional forbidden lusting, unprofessional forbidden lusting-fulfilling, cat-chasing, wrist-breaking, inopportune body-betraying, boyfriend-dumping planning, dead-professor missing, committee meeting texting, bureaucratic student miss-filing, classroom failing, hidden Confederate-history uncovering, book-writing, online teaching-demanding, student-advising failing, professional dysphoria-feeling, drunk-tank loitering ……


    The-Demon-Life - white
    White, Lowell Mick. That Demon Life: A Novel. Gival Press, 2009

    Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award — Linda Smallwood, a sometimes difficult, sometimes depressed criminal defense attorney, finds that her life mirrors what the Rolling Stones call That Demon Life. Here in over the course of a grueling week, Linda encounters a parade of thugs, slackers, and eccentrics-hookers, lawyers, bartenders, cab drivers, and political fixers of various stripes, a world with echoes of A Confederacy of Dunces. She loses her job, falls back into a relationship with her now-married ex-fiancé, and convinces her best friend to seduce and blackmail the man she holds responsible for her misfortunes.


    Long-Time-Ago-Good - white
    White, Lowell Mick. Long Time Ago Good: Sunset Dreams from Austin and Beyond. Slough Press, 2009

    This story collection—a finalist for the annual first fiction award presented by the Texas Institute of Letters—explores Austin, Texas, a city famous for music, football, and drunken fun frolics— and famous too for traffic jams, anomie, and dislocation. In Long Time Ago Good, Lowell Mick White imaginatively recreates this city, this region. Here is a folksy reporter covering a chitlins cook-off, a ragged cab driver fighting for his life, a lonely jewelry maker focusing too much on the past—a high tech worker losing her job, a bureaucrat looking for something more.


     

    Selected Short Fiction/Periodical

    • “July 17, 1978,” Still: The Journal, Spring 2015
    • “Worthless,” Kestrel, Spring 2014
    • “Guernsey Cows,” Kestrel, Fall 2013
    • “Baby Never Grew,” Chagrin River Review, Spring 2013
    • “Beset by Demons,” Workers Write, Spring 2013
    • “Something Else Finally Happened,” Amarillo Bay, Spring 2013
    • “The Road Back to Destruction Bay,” Callaloo, Spring 2009