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Brad Barkley grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he spent his childhood roaming creeks, riding bikes (no helmets), practicing magic tricks, and developing an early love of stories. That love was fueled by books, a fanatical devotion to Mad Magazine, and 8mm films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Lon Chaney borrowed from the library and projected in his parents’ basement — often to an audience of one.
In high school he played soccer, rebuilt a ’65 Mustang in his parents’ garage, and discovered the short stories of Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor. At the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, mentors and professors nudged him toward writing and teaching, while summers were spent working a string of odd jobs, including short-order cook, telemarketer, dairy bottling line worker, and roofer.
After a brief and only moderately fulfilling stint as a technical editor for a Navy contractor, Barkley committed himself to fiction, publishing his first short stories and later earning an MFA from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. He went on to publish a number of books, including the novels Money, Love (Norton) and Alison’s Automotive Repair Manual (St. Martin’s), the story collections Circle View and Another Perfect Catastrophe, and the YA novels Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, Dream Factory, and Jars of Glass (Penguin/Dutton).
His short fiction has appeared in more than forty magazines, including Glimmer Train, The Southern Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and multiple Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council.
Brad Barkley lives in the mountains of Maryland with his wife, Kristin, and their rescue dog, Millie.
His new YA novel, The Reel Life of Zara Kegg, will be published in June 2026.
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