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Mark Costello, a native of Decatur, Illinois, is the author of the story collections The Murphy Stories (University of Illinois Press, 1973) , which won the St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction, and Middle Murphy (University of Illinois Press, 1991) . The Murphy Stories has received great praise, the story, Murphy's Xmas having been anthologized in several collections.Costello taught for many years at the University of Illinois-Urbana as a creative writing instructor, and served as a visiting writer at many universities and college. He has held the Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and was, for a year, writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.

His reputation has persevered over the years, despite the limited output of his work. For example, his story Room 601 has recently received great praise. Murphy is known for his careful, exacting use of language, and the deep, introspective nature of his characters. The stories are set in central Illinois and feature hard-drinking, hard-living Michael Murphy.

His work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, and Best American Short Stories.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mark Costello", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0