Mark Wish, who grew up as Mark Wisniewski on the wrong side of the tracks in segregated Milwaukee, Wisconsin, wanted to be a fiction writer after reading Flannery O’Connor in high school. He deferred his entrance into Georgetown University’s law school for a year to write his first novel, Never Enough Ketchup, which his best friend from way back still swears is his most interesting book, but which naturally remains unpublished.
Upon graduation from Georgetown, Mark handed the diploma for his J.D. to his mother and swore off law for good. He thanks his older brother, the late “Dr. Ted” Wisniewski, who founded an AIDS clinic in the late eighties, for helping him pay off his student loans so he could afford to write. Since then he’s spent his nights trying to sleep and his days writing, teaching writing, editing literary magazines such as California Quarterly and New York Stories, revising the novels of others to help them land agents, walking the streets of NYC with his wife Elizabeth Coffey, or, when his most recent injury has healed enough, practicing his three point shot on the renowned asphalt courts near the Hudson in Riverside Park.
His first novel, Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman, compared favorably with Huckleberry Finn by the Los Angeles Times back in 1997, went to a second printing one month after publication. Watch Me Go, his third novel, was published by Putnam and praised by Rebecca Makkai, Daniel Woodrell, Ben Fountain, and Salman Rushdie. More than 125 of Mark’s short stories have appeared in print venues such as Best American Stories, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction International, and The Sun; one won a Pushcart Prize. He and Elizabeth are the adoptive parents of a Scottish fold named Ray, who’s becoming a star on social media. Mark recently founded the annual short story anthology Coolest American Stories, which he and Elizabeth edit, pushing its contributors to make their fiction as compelling as possible, reminding them that readers crave “unputdownable” storytelling. He believes literacy is crucial in a United States and a world in which people get along rather than argue like—well, like attorneys.
Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you Mark Wish’s Necessary Deeds in the spring of 2024.
