The Reluctant Sheriff is Chris Offutt’s fourth book featuring Mick Hardin.  Back in the familiar setting of the Kentucky hills, Mick Hardin returns standing in as the sheriff while the previous sheriff, his sister Linda, recuperates from a gunshot wound sustained in the line of duty. Living in Linda’s house in Rocksalt, Mick finds himself entwined in the trials and tribulations of being a sheriff in the perturbing Kentucky community. Unable to retire from a world of dubiousness and violence, Mick Hardin is back with determination to deliver retribution.

“Beautifully descriptive… Offutt’s Mick Hardin novels are powerful books that feature characters with questionable ethics”      — Library Journal

Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, population 200, a former mining town in the Appalachian hills.  His books include Shifty’s Boys, The Killing Hills, Country Dark, Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, The Good Brother, The Same River Twice, No Heroes, and My Father the Pornographer.  He wrote and produced scripts for True Blood, Weeds, and Treme.  His television work was nominated for an Emmy.

His work is in many anthologies, including The Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Memoirs, Best American Food Writing, Best of the Decade: New Stories of the South, and The Vintage Book of American Short Stories.  His writing has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  He received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for “prose that takes risks.”  The international magazine Granta included him in its list of the “Top 20 Young American Writers.”

This program will be moderated by Marc Dickinson.  He is the author of the short story collection, Replacement Parts (Atmosphere Press, 2024) His stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Cream City Review, North American Review, Greensboro Review, Chattahoochee Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, South Dakota Review, American Literary Review (as winner of the ALR Fiction Prize), as well as other journals. He lives in Iowa with his wife and two children, where he teaches creative writing at Des Moines Area Community College and coordinates the long-running reading series, Celebration of the Literary Arts.