Andrew Ervin is an American writer whose debut 2010 novella collection Extraordinary Renditions was selected by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2010. His 2015 debut novel Burning Down George Orwell’s House was listed as an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Book Review. He currently lives in Philadelphia.
Ervin holds a BA in Philosophy and Religion, an MS in English and MFA in Fiction. He Served as the inaugural Southern Review Resident Scholar at Louisiana State University. He was previously the Kratz Writer-in-Residence at Goucher College and a 2016-2017 Digital Studies Fellow at Rutgers University-Camden. He teaches part-time for the Honors Program and the MFA program in creative writing at Temple University as well as for the Interactive Games and Media department at Rochester Institute of Technology. As a fiction writer, his short stories have appeared in the literary journals Conjunctions, Fiction International, The Southern Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Monkeybicycle and Golden Handcuffs Review. His fiction has been included in the anthologies Chicago Noir, Mythtym, Topograph, and Gigantic Worlds. His story “The Light of Two Million Stars” in Conjunctions was listed among the “distinguished submissions” in Best American Short Stories 2010, edited by Richard Russo. Selections of his fiction appear online at Hobart, Significant Objects, Revolver and Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. His first book was a collection of novellas, Extraordinary Renditions, published in 2010. Publisher’s Weekly included Extraordinary Renditions on its list of the “Best Books of 2010.” That book was a long-list finalist for The Story Prize Ervin’s debut novel Burning Down George Orwell’s House was published in 2015 by Soho Press. Parisian publishing house Éd Joelle Losfeld/Gallimard released the novel's French translation. in 2016. As a critic, Ervin has published hundreds of book reviews and essays in USA Today, New York Times Book Review, The Believer, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, American Book Review and elsewhere. Selections of his critical essays can be found online at Salon, The Rumpus, Conversational Reading and Publishing Perspectives. His first book-length work of criticism Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World, a “cultural and experiential history of video games, from Tennis for Two to Minecraft and beyond, drawing on art criticism and interviews with seminal game creators” was published by Basic Books in May 2017. As an editor, Ervin interned at the publishing houses Dalkey Archive Press and FC2. He guest edited two issues of American Book Review and one the nonfiction for an issue of Hobart. He has worked at the literary magazines Monkeybicycle, Ninth Letter and The Southern Review.
Published works
;Novel
Burning Down George Orwell’s House,
;Novellas
Extraordinary Renditions: 3 Novellas,
;Criticism
Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World,
