Hazuka, Tom 1956-

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HAZUKA, Tom 1956-

PERSONAL: Born 1956. Education: Fairfield University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1977; University of California, Davis, M.A., 1983; University of Utah, Ph. D., 1990.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Central Connecticut State University, 1615 Stanley Street, 317 Willard Hall, New Britain, CT 06050.

CAREER: Quarterly West, Salt Lake City, UT, coeditor, 1987-89; Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, professor.

AWARDS, HONORS: Bruce P. Rossley Award for New England writers, 1996.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with James Thomas and Denise Thomas) FlashFiction: Very Short Stories, Norton (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor, with J. P. Maney) A Celestial Omnibus: ShortFiction on Faith, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1997.

The Road to the Island (novel), Bridge Works Publishers (Bridgehampton, NY), 1998.

In the City of the Disappeared (novel), Bridge Works Publishers (Bridgehampton, NY), 2000.

Contributor of numerous short stories, poems, and scholarly articles to periodicals, including Southeast Review, Hawaii Review, South Carolina Review, Spark, Cottonwood, Pulpsmith, Chariton Review, and Quarterly West.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Last Chance for First, a novel; Exile in Gringolandia, a memoir; An Insider's Guide to the NCAA Final Four.

SIDELIGHTS: Author Tom Hazuka is a professor of English at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut, where he teaches in the creative writing program. He holds degrees in English, including a doctorate from the University of Utah, and spent several years in Chile, working for the Peace Corps. During his tenure in Utah, he was coeditor of Quarterly West, one of many periodicals that have published his writing. An accomplished writer in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, his work often deals with spiritual subjects, focusing on man's search for meaning in life.

Hazuka's first novel, The Road to the Island, tells the story of Jimmy Dolan and how he suffers following the death of his father, a marathon runner, in a mysterious hit-and-run accident while the older man is out running one night. After the incident, Dolan returns home to Connecticut for the first time in five years. He had fled town after the accidental death of a family friend, inadvertently caused by Dolan's affair with a local teacher. While struggling to uncover the truth of his father's death, Dolan works through the demons of his own past.

Charles Flowers, in a review for the New York Times Book Review, commented on Hazuka's "supercharged expository style," but went on to remark that "Hazuka eventually lets the novel's fast-paced plotting assume such control that it distorts the emotional range and logic of his story." He felt that Hazuka shows promise for the future, however. David A. Berona, reviewing The Road to the Island for Library Journal, wrote that "the evocation of small-town life and popular culture in the Sixties is memorable." A contributor to Publishers Weekly called the book "a convincing if unmemorable portrait of a sensitive young man struggling to make things right in a world where, most often, everything goes wrong."

With In the City of the Disappeared, Hazuka mines the time he spent in the Peace Corps, sending his protagonist to Santiago, Chile, the city referred to in the book's title. Harry Bayliss has just graduated from college, and his mission in Chile is to teach children how to play baseball. During his tenure he finds himself learning about the country's politics, and he is eventually drawn into the city's dissident movement. In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer commented that "Hazuka takes an earnest and sometimes compelling look at life in Chile shortly after Pinochet's ascension to power," and went on to write that he "tells Harry's story with both economy and focused vigor." Frank Caso, in Booklist, found that, while Hazuka struggles to avoid stereotypes, many of the Americans in his novel are depicted as "ugly intruders." He went on to remark, however, that "the book's power is in its depiction of Chilean society—the authorities, the resistors, and the people caught in the middle."

Hazuka has also edited collections of short stories. Flash Fiction: Very Short Stories, coedited with James Thomas and Denise Thomas, collects seventy-two previously unpublished stories, all of which are seven hundred and fifty words or less. Authors include Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, and John Updike, as well as some that are lesser known. A contributor to Publishers Weekly advised: "Savor this collection one minute at a time." A Celestial Omnibus: Short Fiction on Faith, which Hazuka edited with J. P. Maney, gathers stories by award-winning authors such as E. M. Forster, Vladimir Nabokov, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, each of whom looks at different aspects of religion, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Native American. Library Journal contributor Melissa Hudak commented that Stephen King's "The Man in the Black Suit" and Zora Neal Hurston's "Sweat" are notable additions to the collection, and said they particularly "give insights into religion that are often not seen in the Christian fiction genre."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1997, Ray Olson, review of ACelestial Omnibus: Short Fiction on Faith, p. 365; August, 1998, Vanessa Bush, review of The Road to the Island, p. 1964; May 15, 2000, Frank Caso, review of In the City of the Disappeared, p. 1729.

Library Journal, November 1, 1997, Melissa Hudak, review of A Celestial Omnibus, p. 64; July, 1998, David A. Berona, review of The Road to the Island, p. 136.

New York Times Book Review, November 8, 1998, Charles Flowers, review of The Road to the Island, p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, June 1, 1992, review of Flash Fiction: Very Short Stories, pp. 57-58; June 29, 1998, review of The Road to the Island, p. 35; May 8, 2000, review of In the City of the Disappeared, p. 205.