Mark Maynard

Maynard's first collection of short stories Grind was published by Torrey House Press in December, 2012. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Antioch University Los Angeles. His short fiction has been selected as runner up in the Our Stories Gordon Fiction Contest and as honorable mention in the Torrey House Press Winter 2011 Fiction Contest. His work has also appeared in Tahoe Blues, Shelf Life Magazine, The Duck and Herring Pocket Field Guide, the Tall Grass Wild Things Anthology and the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market 2010. His chapter "The Eiger Sanction: Midlife and Midcareer on Eastwood's Vertical Frontier" was published in The Films of Clint Eastwood: Critical Perspectives (University of New Mexico Press, 2018) and his story "Last Call at the Smokestack Club" will be in the forthcoming anthology This Side of the Divide: Contemporary Stories of the American West (Baobab Press, February 2019).

Maynard is also a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker. He wrote and directed the 2023 documentary film "Piconland: The Quest for the Perfect Picon Punch" that played numerous festivals including the Austin Revolution Film Festival, Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival, and the Dam Short Film Festival where it won "Best Nevada Film" in 2023.

In 2015, Maynard received the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, and Grind was selected the 2016-17 Nevada Reads Book by the Nevada State Library and Nevada Center for the Book. He was the winner of the first ever Literary Death Match to be held in the Biggest Little City in the World. Maynard teaches English, journalism and creative writing at Truckee Meadows Community College and lives in Reno, NV with his wife and children.