Russell

Just who is Russell Working? I am the Pushcart Prize-winning author of the novel The Insurrectionist, a dark satire of woke journalism and prosecutorial overreach in response to the January 6 chaos.

My two short fiction collections have garnered major awards: Resurrectionists was selected for the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and The Irish Martyr won the University of Notre Dame’s Sullivan Award.

A former reporter with the Chicago Tribune, I have won awards from or had bylines in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Zoetrope, Crazyhorse, and scores of other publications worldwide. I lived in the Russian Far East for five years and have reported from around the world. I have covered illegal gun factories in the Philippines, the trafficking of North Korean women in China, and a Russian governor’s alleged gift of the skin of an endangered Siberian tiger’s skin to the president of Belarus.

Among other honors, I have won the Hackney Literary Award for the novel, the Crab Orchard Review’s story prize, and first places in Narrative magazine story contests. My fellowships include Yaddo, Ledig House, and Passa Porta in Brussels. I have been a visiting faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts‎. 

And yes, Working is my real last name. My paternal ancestors, German immigrants who arrived in 1750, anglicized the name Werkinger in order to blend in. Or so they thought. Then again, a number of German names would be funny if you dropped the final “er.” Luckily for Kissinger offspring in schoolyards everywhere, their ancestors kept the original name.

Praise for my previous books

“[Resurrectionists] introduces a writer of unusual promise. Refusing the easy ironies and glassy surface of most contemporary fiction, Russell Working’s stories enact our uncertain and restless longing for freedom and transcendence—resurrection—against backgrounds and circumstances startling in their vivid actuality.”
—Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life

“Reminiscent of the early Paul Bowles, with the same muscular use of language, the same ability to create a mood fraught with tension….”
—Publishers Weekly

“[Working] has an amazing ability to draw the reader immediately into the world about which he is writing, whether it is the paper mills of the Pacific Northwest, where a former policeman is almost courting death, the Haiti of voodoo and the dread Tonton Macoutes, or the lazy hot summer afternoons of a group of young boys.”
—The New York Times

“Is there any life that Russell Working cannot imagine? In these powerful, haunting stories, he explores the private lives of Egyptian adolescent girls, a North Korean woman sold to a Chinese farmer, a Russian doctor whose child has been stolen, victims of every time and place, always with singular compassion. Outrage for the world’s lost and needy fuels The Irish Martyr, and intelligence and deep love imbue every sentence.”
—Erin McGraw, author of Lies of the Saints

“The Irish Martyr is a powerful, brave, and dangerous book that takes us to the borderlands where religion and geopolitics rip apart the lives of ordinary people. … He writes straight from the heart, with a moral indignation that is palpable.”
—Douglas Glover, author of Elle

“In The Irish Martyr, Russell Working bravely navigates a labyrinthine maze of politics and culture to bring us a searing look at our troubled world.”
—Ed Falco, author of Acid and In the Park of Culture

“Working’s greatest release of short stories yet, The Irish Martyr is enthusiastically recommended reading especially for those who have yet to discover the ever engaging literary, creative, and storytelling style of Russell Working.”
—The Midwest Book Review

“The Irish Martyr is a remarkable response to what is human everywhere.”
―Reginald Gibbons, author of Sweetbitter

“In his ten soulful stories, the author dives headfirst into the murky waters of his characters’ damaged but unforgettable lives. . . . With a style that is both poetic and raw, Working gives us characters from different nations, different realities, yet each is so fully realized and universal that it’s as if we are sharing their lives―and their hardships―for a brief time.”
―St. Anthony Messenger

“If Flannery O’Connor had lived to read The Irish Martyr, she would have written Russell Working a letter of appreciation. These stories are instructive and fascinating.”
―David Huddle, author of The Story of a Million Years