Tony Ardizzone

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Tony Ardizzone, full name Anthony V. Ardizzone, is an American novelist, short story writer, and editor born in 1949 in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up on the North Side of Chicago and attended Roman Catholic schools run by the Christian Brothers. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1971 and an MFA from Bowling Green State University in 1975. He also completed a year of graduate work at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1973.

Ardizzone has taught writing at Saint Mary’s Center for Learning in Chicago, Bowling Green State University, Old Dominion University, Indiana University Bloomington, and the low-residency MFA program at Vermont College in Montpelier. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

He is known for originating the Wax The Floor Metaphor for fiction writing, a method that encourages drafting a complete manuscript from start to finish before spending time editing individual sections.

Selected works:
- In the Name of the Father (1978)
- Heart of the Order (1986)
- The Evening News (1986)
- Larabi's Ox: Stories of Morocco (1992)
- Taking it Home: Stories from the Neighborhood (1996)
- In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu (1999)

Awards:
- Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction (1986)