He was raised in
Covington, Louisiana where he attended
St. Paul's School. Horack holds a B.A. in English and a J.D. from
Florida State University. He worked as a lawyer for five years in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana before committing fully to writing and teaching. He is a former
Stegner Fellow and
Jones Lecturer at
Stanford University, and is currently an associate professor at
Florida State University. His story collection
The Southern Cross, which won the
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize, was published in 2009 by
Mariner Books. The contest was judged by
Antonya Nelson, who called the story collection "a knockout winner." Hailed as a "storyteller of uncommon talent," Horack's stories are "artfully evoked and deeply felt" and depict characters that are "vital, funny, and heartbreakingly human." His novel
The Eden Hunter was published in August 2010 by
Counterpoint and was a
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Reviewer
Sven Birkerts noted: "Horack, the author of a well-received story collection,
The Southern Cross, writes luminous, clean prose....He has a poet’s tuned attentiveness, but never uses his sentences to preen." His novel
The Other Joseph was published in March 2015 by
Ecco.
Publishers Weekly called it an "exciting, well-plotted sophomore novel" that "delivers satisfying plot turns." Horack's fiction and nonfiction has also appeared in
Oxford American,
The Southeast Review,
New Delta Review,
Louisiana Literature,
The Southern Review,
StoryQuarterly,
Epoch,
Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere. ==References==