Made for Love (Nutting) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981-82
• Raised—Valrico, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Florida, M.F.A., University of Alabama
   Ph.D., University of Nevada-Las Vegas
• Awards—Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction
• Currently—lives in Grinnell, Iowa


Alissa Nutting is an American author and creative writing professor. She graduated from high school in Valrico, Florida, (about an hour from Tampa, which became the title of her debut novel). She received her B.A. from the University of Florida, her M.F.A. from the University of Alabama, and her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. She has taught creative writing at John Caroll University in Ohio and the University of Nevada. She is currently assistant professor at Grinnell College in Iowa.

Writing
Nutting is author of the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (2010). The book was selected by judge Ben Marcus as winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction and was a finalist for a ForeWord Book of the Year.

Her first novel, Tampa, published in 2013, is based on a real-life story about a middle school teacher in Tampa who, in 2005, had sex with her students. Tampa is not far from where Nutting was raised—and the teacher in question was a classmate of Nutting. The novel is overtly sexual and was banned in some bookstores although Nutting says neither her publisher nor editors asked her to tone it down, They understood that the content needed to be explicit.

Nutting released her second novel, Made for Love, in 2017. It is an absurd take on the impact of modern technology on human intimacy. One character, the heroine's father, is in love with an inflatable sex doll, and another character in love with a dolphin.

In addition to her books, Nutting's writing has appeared in Tin House, Fence, BOMB, Oprah Magazine, and the fairy tale anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.

Personal
Nutting lives in Iowa with her daughter and her second husband, fellow Grinnell professor Dean Bakopoulos. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/3/2017.)