Gregory Spatz
Gregory Spatz (born 1964) is an American author and musician who lives in Washington. He is best known for the novels Inukshuk and No One But Us, and for the short-story collections Wonderful Tricks and Half as Happy.
Spatz teaches in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University and tours with John Reischman and The Jaybirds, a bluegrass band. He also plays the violin and writes about folk, bluegrass, and acoustic music. His short stories have appeared in journals such as The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Glimmer Train, and Epoch.
He has won several honors, including the Washington State Book Award for Wonderful Tricks in 2003 and a 2012 NEA Literature Fellowship. He has also received multiple grants from the Washington State Artist Trust.
Spatz was born in New York City and grew up mostly in the Berkshires of New England. He started playing the violin at age five, inspired by his grandparents’ visits to Tanglewood. He earned a BA from Haverford College in 1986, an MA from the University of New Hampshire in 1990, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1994.
Early in his career, Spatz supported himself by playing music and teaching, and he edited manuscripts. Besides Inukshuk and Half as Happy, he has published several novels and story collections and continues to write and teach about literature and music.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:58 (CET).