Presenting Local Award Winning Author Rick Skwiot

Rick Skwiot is the author of three novels—the Hemingway First Novel Award winner Death in Mexico (1998), the Willa Cather Fiction Prize finalist Sleeping With Pancho Villa (1999), and Key West Story (2012)—as well as two memoirs: the critically-acclaimed Christmas at Long Lake: A Childhood Memory (2004) and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of a Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing (2010). His forthcoming mystery novel, Fail, chronicles widespread corruption and malpractice in urban politics and public education. He also works as a feature writer, essayist, book reviewer, ghostwriter and editor.

Skwiot has taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis and served as the 2004 Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He now lives in Key West, Florida.

Skwiot earned a B.A. in sociology from the University of Missouri–St. Louis, an M.A. in English literature from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Old Dominion University.

Kirkus Reviews calls his latest novel, Key West Story, “beach noir” in which “Key West is beautifully captured in all its shallow, hedonistic glory.” In it a young Ernest Hemingway returns to today’s Key West from Writers Heaven to help get a down-and-out writer back on track.

[For more information or to purchase Rick Skwiot’s published work click here.]

Award-winning novelist and memoirist Rick Skwiot not only writes about Key West, he mentors other writers—in Key West and elsewhere—through the nonprofit Key West Writers Lab. 

Skwiot cofounded the Key West Writers Lab in 2011 with novelist and poet Rosalind Brackenbury to help emerging writers of all ages move their books to completion with one-on-one guidance and instruction.

Those wishing to support the Lab’s work or its fellowship fund with a tax-deductible donation can write to [email protected].