Pinckney Benedict | English | SIU

Pinckney Benedict

Professor

Pinckney Benedict studied creative writing at Princeton University (BA 1986) and at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA 1988). He established and directs the Digital Xpressions Lab of the College of Liberal Arts.

Pinckney Benedict grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. He studied English and creative writing at Princeton University as an undergraduate and received his MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has published a novel (Dogs of God) and three collections of short fiction, the most recent of which is Miracle Boy and Other Stories. His work has been published in, among other magazines and anthologies, Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, the O. Henry Award series (twice), the Pushcart Prize series (three times), the Best New Stories from the South series (four times), Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days, The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, and The Oxford Book of the American Short Story (both the 1992 edition and the twentieth-anniversary edition). He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Four Days, which stars William Forsythe, Lolita Davidovich, Colm Meaney, and Kevin Zegers. He also wrote the lyrics and libretto for A:The Scarlet Letter, a musical adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel. Benedict is the recipient of, among other awards and honors, a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fiction grant from the Illinois Arts Council, two Plattner Awards for fiction from Appalachian Heritage magazine, a Literary Fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award. He has taught on the creative writing faculties of, among others, Oberlin College, The Ohio State University, West Virginia University, Warren Wilson College, Princeton University, Davidson College, Queens University of Charlotte NC, and Hollins University. He has taught on the faculties of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Aspen Writers’ Foundation’s Summer Words Writing Retreat & Literary Festival. He is a tutor for Oxford University’s Artificial Intelligence: Cloud and Edge Implementations course, and he will serve as a tutor for Oxford’s Metaverse: Creating and Deploying Services, a new course for creators, developers, and domain experts who aspire to be pioneers in the immersive world of the metaverse, in 2023. He is the senior fiction writer in the Creative Writing Program of the School, as well as the founder and director of the Digital Expressions Lab (DXL) of the College of Liberal Arts, which puts powerful technology for creation in the hands of liberal arts students. 

Specialties

• fiction (short story and novel) 
• virtual reality 
• artificial intelligence (in art creation)
• gaming and interactive narrative

Videos

The Monster Professor podcast “Leatherface VR The Shape” 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bIDDWN8EuE&t=80s 

Text to image AI demo 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMPSI7NXOfM&t=41s 

“Writers Play: Disco Elysium” game commentary from DXL’s “Writers Play” series 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSpAfeg-dic&t=3434s 

“Writers Play: Game Jam” game commentary on DXL’s first narrative game jam 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3cAZh-F_zA 

MFA student Sarah Jilek capstone presentation 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7brKrkxtTeM 

ENGL 492A Advanced Fiction streaming session 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LDHBbbC9fM&t=2s 

“DXL Talks: AI and Its Impacts on Your Life” talk by Ajit Jaokar, Oxford University 
Hosted by the Digital Expressions Lab” 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD6LAw2gSos 

“Beyond the Bio: Interview with Allison Joseph” DXL artist interview series 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxHptEa92Yc 

“Voices of the Condemned” audio narrative 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMA89Zb6VFM 

“Earth Isn’t Answering” 360-degree video short 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70aQJGHnr80&t=15s 

“This is My Jam” experiment is the use of stock assets 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAC8-tk_obo 

“Heat” experimental short from the series Momentum Studies 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5RX_Enxi2A&t=13s 

A: The Scarlet Letter concert performance 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QmlHo8RTRk 

“Haunted Houses” VR adaptation of Wordsworth poem 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW6iFGZSffA&t=11s 

Miracle Boy short film adaptation of the short story 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SRQ0-QqVpo&t=146s 

“Orgo VR the Flatlanders” short graphic narrative 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuAlg7X8rw&t=155s 

“Kentucky Samurai” short graphic narrative 
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KxzSef_qDy8 

“Go Killer Go Run Killer Run” short graphic narrative 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxaUnNTzmjg&t=9s 

Four Days selected stills 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xf6dAPJH6Y 

“Don’t Touch the Gorilla” dynamic storytelling example 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDX8KedmM84 

Blue Angels VIP flight 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujwTH5_H2Ks&t=186s