Robert Busby grew up in a rural dry town in the hill country of North Mississippi and is the author of the story collection Bodock, which won the 2024 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize and was published by Hub City Press in June 2025. 

A graduate of the University of Mississippi, Robert got his MFA in Fiction from Florida International University, and his stories have appeared in Pleiades, PANK, Mississippi Noir, Cold Mountain Review, Sou’wester, Surreal South, Arkansas Review, stymie, and others. His poems have appeared in Cobalt Review, Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, The Dead Mule, Tigertail, Portland Monthly, Like the Wind, and others.

Robert served as fiction editor for Gulf Stream Magazine from 2009–2011 and has taught for thirteen years in a variety of environments, including the university classroom, individual tutoring, gifted education, and middle grades at both public and private schools. He’s also worked as a bandsaw operator, bookseller, copywriter, driving school instructor, editor, prep cook, produce clerk, educator, content director, and satellite television technician. 

Robert enjoys camping, hiking, drinking bourbon, grilling, and blaring alt-country from the ‘90s and early 2000s. Currently, he teaches high school English and writes, roams about, and raises two humans and two rescues with his wife in Memphis, TN.

Robert’s agent is Sara Wigal of Ami McConnell Literary Agency.