Brian Richardson received his PhD from the University of Washington in 1988. Before coming to the University of Maryland, he taught at the University of Florida for four years. His primary areas of interest are narrative theory, twentieth century literature, and the poetics of drama. His current focus is on the major fiction of Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett. He is also interested in unusual and audacious works by authors of all periods from Aristophanes and Petronius to Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie. He is the organizer and director of the Washington Area Modernist Symposium and the UM James Joyce Colloquium 2007.