Thomas Payne's short story collection, Scar Vegas (Harcourt), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Pen/Hemingway Award finalist, a Village Voice "Writer on the Verge" pick, an Esquire "Hot List" book, a Barnes and Noble "Discover New Writers" pick, and was featured on National Public Radio. A finalist for the National Magazine Award, Payne has published stories in The New Yorker, Harper's, Playboy, Zoetrope, The Boston Review, The New England Review, Glimmer Train, The Oxford American, One Story, Story, and elsewhere. His fiction has also appeared in the award anthologies The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize (twice), Best New Stories from the South, American Fiction X: Best Stories from Unpublished Writers, and The KGB Bar Reader. His novel The Pearl of Kuwait (Harcourt) was featured on public radio, reviewed nationally, and recently optioned. He is a graduate of Princeton and the Columbia M.F.A. program.
