Ernest J. Finney

Ernest J. Finney writes stories and novels, most of them set in California, often in the San Francisco Bay area where he grew up or in the places he's lived and worked since then--the north coast, the Sierras and the central valley. His short fiction has received a number of awards, among them an O. Henry Awards first prize for "Peacocks." His first two story collections, Birds Landing and Flights in the Heavenlies, won California Book Awards. His novels include Winterchill, Lady With the Alligator Purse, Words of My Roaring, and California Time. His third short fiction collection, Sequoia Gardens: California Stories, received the Northern California Book Award for best work of fiction, 2011. His most recent book, Elevation: 6,040, won the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize held annually by Texas Review Press and the California Book Award silver medal for fiction, 2016. Finney lives in Sierra County, California, where he's finishing a series of novels that take place during the turbulent decades following the Gold Rush.