BEN STEINHORN
A Brief Biography
I grew up in the Bay Area in a small Jewish family, studied mathematics, and now live in San Francisco with my fiancée. I had a younger brother who died of complications related to Schizophrenia in 2021. My first novel, THE OGRE, is about his life. Set in a fictional climbing town in Northern California, it compares and contrasts madness in the rock climbing world with the effects of schizophrenia on a family.
I am also at work on a second novel about a software engineer who convinces an AI to convert to Judaism. It also compares and contrasts madness in the rock climbing world with the effects of schizophrenia on a family. Just kidding. It explores the costs of assimilation in a Jewish Crime family. Think The Sopranos meets Silicon Valley in the style of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow.
Why I Became a Writer
I read too many books in high school and college. After reading straight through a book I would collapse on the floor just to sit in the feeling of the novel's world a little longer. Due to an illness, it took me longer to graduate college than usual. In my last year of college, when I turned 25, my mother took me to a bookstore in San Francisco, where I ended up getting 22 books. I spent the next 60 days reading 60 books. Reading that much changed something in me. I started paying more attention to language and structure, and I found my way to The Great Gatsby, to John Banville's The Sea, to Cormac McCarthy. I discovered a love of language and I have never felt more perfect than when I am writing.
How I Became a Writer
Ten years ago I started posting my short fiction on Reddit. My thinking was this: I would pre-write a very short story, then find a top Reddit comment and post my story in response to it. The story would have nothing to do with the comment above it, and would live or die based on how good it was, or if people wanted to upvote it. I read a hundred books a year and tried to write like the best writers I was reading, and in doing so I found my voice. In recent years I've shared that voice at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Aspen Summer Words, and the Napa Writers' Conference.