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Thomas Fox Averill is Writer-in-residence and Professor of English at Washburn University of Topeka, where he teaches courses in Creative Writing and in Kansas Literature, Folklore and Film.

His story collections are Passes at the Moon (Woodley Press, 1985) and Seeing Mona Naked (Watermark Press, 1989).  He is the editor of What Kansas Means to Me: Twentieth Century Writers on the Sunflower State (University Press of Kansas 1990).  In the Fall of 1996, Eagle Books (Wichita) brought out his Oleander's Guide to Kansas: How to Know When You're Here.  His novels are Secrets of the Tsil Cafe (BlueHen/Putnam, 2001) and The Slow Air of Ewan MacPherson (2003).

He helped to found, and was the first director of, Washburn's Center for Kansas Studies. He is the author of numerous articles, poems, and short stories (most recently in New Letters, Cimarron Review, Chariton Review, North American Review and Doubletake), and is a frequent speaker on Kansas Culture.

He has edited several books for Woodley Press and the Center for Kansas Studies (most recently In a Place With No Map, poems by Steven Hind, and A West Wind Rises: Masscre at Marais des Cygnes, by Bruce Cutler).

He is also a commentator in the voice of William Jennings Bryan Oleander of Here, Kansas, for KANU, National Public Radio from the University of Kansas. His Oleander play, "Abide With Me," won the first Great Plains Play Competition, and was produced by the University of Kansas Theatre as the final play of the 1996-97 Season.

Email: tom.averill@washburn.edu
Webpage: http://www.washburn.edu/cas/english/taverill/

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