Michael Kardos

Rehoboth Beach

Michael Kardos headshot
Michael Kardos Photo Credit: Megan Bean

Established
Literature: Fiction

By: Gail Obenreder

“I continue to be fascinated by the relationship between magic and fiction, and how they’re both rooted in mystery and wonder.”

For two summers when he was in high school, Michael Kardos ran his own magic booth on the Jersey Shore boardwalk. When he began to write fiction many years later, he found himself returning often to the beach settings where he spent his youth, and in his third novel he began to write specifically about magic.

Kardos feels that “the fiction writer’s job is to pay close attention to the world we think we know in search of its strange and shimmering secrets.” The work he submitted for the Fellowship, “Quick Change,” is his first try at historical fiction, “a story about magic and its machinations.” But he traveled many paths before he settled on writing as a way to “unravel the deeper mysteries of character.”

Growing up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, Kardos always loved reading and writing stories, but he also played the drums. “I always considered myself a musician first.” He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in music composition and didn’t begin to think seriously about writing until he was close to 30. He then moved to Ohio, earning an MFA in creative writing at The Ohio State University. He went on to receive his PhD at the University of Missouri.

excerpt from Quick Change, 2023

I

“James, I consider you a friend and a worthy companion,” Suzanna Mudd told me, an assessment that sounded, coming from her lips, less like praise and more like prelude to an indictment. Long ago, we had played marbles together in the dirt. For years, we walked the last three blocks to school together.

Read more

For many years, Kardos and his family lived in Mississippi, where he taught creative writing at Mississippi State University. His wife is originally from Delaware, and with their children they often spent summers at the Delaware beaches. In 2020, they came here for what they thought would be a temporary move during the pandemic. But, Kardos says, “we were wrong—we liked it here too much,” and they settled in Rehoboth Beach.

When Kardos was growing up, a neighbor who lived on his street was an unwitting influence; “she was the first published author I ever met.” Now he’s one himself, his writing highly praised. His three novels have been published (some in translation) in eight other countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, and Germany, and he has published dozens of short stories and articles. Among his honors, in 2021 Kardos won the Pushcart Prize, and he’s also a frequent guest lecturer and conference participant.

As a writer, he is inspired by “art in all its forms: film, music, visual art, whatever.” And still feeling the call from his early musical days, he’d like to return to playing the drums in a band someday. Despite all his success, he still finds that the time and concentration required for writing is “a tricky dance . . . especially when life gets busy with other responsibilities, which is most of the time.” As an author, he’s rewarded by two things that exist on either end of the creative process: “creating a sentence that feels right” and seeing a published book, with readers sharing “a whole world that once existed only in my head.”

Kardos appreciates how the Division’s award validates the work he is doing. It will give him the chance to spend time researching and writing his latest project, a collection (to include “Quick Change”) called America, Etc. “The DDOA Fellowship means an incredible amount to me.”

Fellowship Home