Mark Dostert

Teaches at WriteSpace Houston

Mark Dostert is the author of Up in Here: Jailing Kids on Chicago’s Other Side, reviewed in Publishers Weekly (“a bracing debut memoir . . . the stories Dostert tells speak for themselves”), excerpted in Salon, and featured at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest. The book focuses on his experience as an unarmed juvenile jail guard. He holds a Master of Arts in English from University of Houston and has taken four classes at the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop in Portland, OR and Houston’s Inprint. His nonfiction has appeared in Ascent, Cimarron Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review Online Content, Houston Chronicle, Southern Indiana Review, and The Summerset Review, and been cited as Notable in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011, The Best American Essays 2011, and The Best American Essays 2013. He teaches in the Magnet Creative Writing Program at Houston ISD’s Johnston Middle School. Find him at www.markdostert.com.