Liam is the author of "The Cloud Atlas" (Delacorte, 2004; Dial, 2005) and "All Saints" (Delacorte, 2007; Dial, 2008). He chairs the English department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and previously coordinated their Ph.D. program in creative writing. He has regularly contributed to local and national public radio, and has written for the Wall Street Journal, The Awl, Commonweal, Esquire.com, Slate, the New York Times Book Review, the Times op-ed page, the Washington Post Magazine, Forbes FYI, Good Housekeeping, Parents, Milwaukee Magazine and a number of other publications in locations ranging from Canada to Brazil.
His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of literary journals, including Gulf Coast, the New Haven Review, Tinge (where his story was named one of the Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2011 by storySouth), the Writers Chronicle, Blackbird, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Indiana Review, Caketrain, failbetter and Phoebe. Callanan is also the creator and co-executive producer of the Poetry Everywhere animated film series.