The Complete Guide to Writing Compelling Short Stories

Gary DeFalco has spent over two decades teaching creative writing at universities, community centers, and online workshops across the United States. His short fiction has appeared in more than fifty literary magazines, including *The Paris Review*, *One Story*, *Tin House*, and *Zoetrope: All-Story*. A two-time finalist for the Pushcart Prize, he is also the author of three previous craft books: *The Scene Works* (2015), *Dialogue That Dances* (2018), and *The Art of the Revision* (2020).  

DeFalco holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA in English from Colgate University. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he runs the popular “Short Story Lab” — a weekly meetup that has helped hundreds of emerging writers finish and publish their work. When not writing or teaching, he can be found hiking the Columbia River Gorge, playing fingerstyle guitar, or losing himself in a collection of stories by Anton Chekhov or Alice Munro.  

*The Complete Guide to Writing Compelling Short Stories* distills everything DeFalco has learned from both teaching and writing — a practical, no-nonsense framework designed to help writers at any stage move from idea to finished story with confidence.