Patrick Michael Finn was born in Joliet, Illinois and was raised there and in rural Southern California. His first book, the novella A Martyr for Suzy Kosasovich, was selected by Tom Barbash as winner of the Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Competition and published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. A winner of the AWP Intro Award, selected by Benjamin Alíre Sáenz, and the Third Coast Fiction Prize, judged by Stuart Dybek, Finn’s stories have appeared in Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Third Coast, Quarterly West, The Texas Review, The Clackamas Literary Review, Punk Planet, and Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Mystery Stories. His fiction has also received citations in the Pushcart Prize and The Best American Short Stories. He lives in Arizona with his wife, poet Valerie Bandura, and their son James. Patrick’s short story collection, From the Darkness Right Under Our Feet (Black Lawrence Press, 2011), won the 2009 Hudson Prize and was selected as a Best Book of 2011 in GQ Magazine.

“In A Martyr for Suzy Kosasovich, Patrick Michael Finn writes of the disappearing Midwest, of Joliet, Illinois, and its factories and assembly lines and rail yards leading out of town. The tension and violence that mark this fierce portrait of urban decay are tempered by Finn’s insistence that the people in this world endure. Finn’s voice is striking, rich with the poetry of lives measured by time clocks and fistfights, and his novella seethes with dark and fascinating magic.” –Michael Jamie-Becerra

“Patrick Michael Finn has written a fierce and frightening, often gorgeously described, swirling, pulsing, sweating runaway car crash of a novella that reminded me of the darker works of Denis Johnson and Hubert Selby. A Martyr For Suzy Kosasovich is an unsparing look at the other side of the American dream; the collective rage that passes for friendship in some corners. While Finn’s characters are often short sighted and mean spirited, his luminous writing and knack for telling detail, makes their story relevant and unforgettable.” –Tom Barbash 

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Industrial Worker Book Review

Trop Magazine