Award-winning short story writer credits Wooster for supporting his career path

David Means ’84 received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short story writing earlier in June 2025. Means, who teaches at Vassar College and has published six collections of short stories, credits The College of Wooster for being an important influence at an impressionable time in his life.

Means majored in English at Wooster and wrote a collection of poems for his senior Independent Study, advised by Michael Allen, then assistant professor of English. “He went over each line of a poem and put me under great pressure to make it yield meaning,” Means recalled. “It’s similar to what I put my students through now at Vassar.”

Means, who grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, chose to attend Wooster mostly because of Jim Bean, a professor of French, cross-country coach, and mentor to generations. “He was a very warm, supportive person and made everyone feel like part of the family,” Means said, “but he was also a good coach. I ran up and down that hill by the golf course a million times.”

Means also met his wife, Geneve Patterson-Means, at Wooster, although she transferred before graduation. “Life wouldn’t be anything like it is now if it wasn’t for Wooster,” he said.

Following graduation, he enrolled at Columbia and got an MFA in creative writing, still concentrating on poetry, but he was also interested in narrative stories. When he went to work reading manuscripts at a publishing house in New York, he thought he could do as well or better than the authors in the slush pile. His first collection of stories was published in 1991, and his most recent collection, Two Nurses, Smoking, was published in 2022.

Means has also written one novel, Hystopia, published in 2016. He still prefers the short story genre, but he found that a novel offered “room to make mistakes and clean things up.” And the reaction to its publication was a not entirely welcome surprise. “People read novels a lot more than short stories,” he said wryly. “It was a humbling experience.”

Many noted novelists began their careers as poets, and Means said: “Writing poetry teaches you to look closely, to be persnickety about language, and to use the music of language.” But one form often bleeds into another, and he said his prose is often intensely poetic.

Thinking back to his Independent Study experience at Wooster, Means said, “I thought I was an accomplished poet by the time I was a senior. It’s valuable to do something complete that you started from scratch.”

The PEN/Malamud Award, sponsored by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation since 1988, recognizes a career body of work rather than one book, and Means didn’t know he had been nominated until he got the call while he was on vacation. “When you look at the list of past winners, it’s an astonishing feeling to join them,” he said, “but you also feel a kinship with writers of the past.” And, he hastens to add, “I’m not done. I have a lot of stories to keep writing.”

Photo: David Means ’84, Photo by Beowulf Sheehan, provided by the subject.

Posted in Alumni on November 25, 2025.