Author
Steven Millhauser
Birth Date
August 3, 1943
(82 Years)
Associated Country
United States
Steven Millhauser is an American novelist and short story writer known for his imaginative, often fantastical fiction that blends realism with dreamlike and philosophical elements. He was born in New York City and raised in Connecticut. Millhauser studied at Columbia University and later taught for many years at Skidmore College.
He first gained attention with his novel Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954 (1972), a highly original work written as a fictional biography of a child prodigy. Millhauser is especially celebrated for his short stories, which often explore themes of illusion, obsession, and the boundaries between reality and imagination. His collection Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1997.
Other notable works include The Barnum Museum and Dangerous Laughter, both of which showcase his intricate style and fascination with spectacle, artifice, and the extraordinary hidden within everyday life. Millhauser is regarded as a unique voice in American literature, admired for his precision, creativity, and ability to create richly detailed imaginative worlds.
He first gained attention with his novel Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954 (1972), a highly original work written as a fictional biography of a child prodigy. Millhauser is especially celebrated for his short stories, which often explore themes of illusion, obsession, and the boundaries between reality and imagination. His collection Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1997.
Other notable works include The Barnum Museum and Dangerous Laughter, both of which showcase his intricate style and fascination with spectacle, artifice, and the extraordinary hidden within everyday life. Millhauser is regarded as a unique voice in American literature, admired for his precision, creativity, and ability to create richly detailed imaginative worlds.
Books
Disruptions 2025
Here are eighteen stories of astonishing range and precision. A housewife drinks alone in her Connecticut living room. A guillotine glimmers above a sleepy town green. A pre-recorded customer service...
Voices in the Night 2016
Beloved for the lens of the strange he places on small town life, Steven Millhauser further reveals in Voices in the Night the darkest parts of our inner selves to brilliant and dazzling effect. Here...
The Barnum Museum 2014
The Barnum Museum is a combination waxworks, masked ball, and circus sideshow masquerading as a collection of short stories. Within its pages, note such sights as: a study of the motives and...
We Others 2012
Steven Millhauser’s fiction has consistently, and to dazzling effect, dissolved the boundaries between reality and fantasy, waking life and dreams, the past and the future, darkness and light, love...
Dangerous Laughter 2009
The collection is divided into three parts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as “Cat ’n’ Mouse” reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite...
The King in the Tree 2004
While ostensibly showing her home to a prospective buyer, the narrator of “Revenge” unfolds an origami-like narrative of betrayal and psychic violence. In “An Adventure of Don Juan” the legendary...
Enchanted Night 2000
The delicious cast of characters includes a band of teenage girls who break into homes and simply leave notes reading "We Are Your Daughters," a young woman who meets a phantom lover on the tree swing...
The Knife Thrower 1999
With the panache of an old-fashioned magician, Steven Millhauser conducts his readers from the dark corners beneath the sunlit world to a balloonist's tour of the heavens. He transforms department...
Martin Dressler 1997
In late 19th-century New York City, Martin Dressler rises from humble beginnings as the son of a cigar shop owner to become an ambitious and visionary entrepreneur. Driven by imagination and...
Edwin Mullhouse 1996
As a memorial, Edwin Mullhouse's best friend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises...