As far as the press releases go, Chuck Palahniuk (pronounced paluh-nik) is originally from the northwest, both Washington and Oregon.

He finished his first novel, Fight Club, after only three months of writing while he paid the bills as a mechanic for Freighliner.

It wasn't his first shot at writing, however. While accepting the award for the H.L. Davis Award for Fiction, he spoke of two other books sent off to New York that were returned with "really really long . . . no's." 

In 1996, Palahniuk had a short story by the name of Project Mayhem published in STORY magazine. That project grew to become the astonishing Fight Club. A year later, STORY published another of his shorts -- this one called Survivor, which he would go on to craft into a full-length as before.

This past September, Palahniuk released Invisible Monsters with WW Norton and is now touring in support of the book.

He continues to live in Portland, Oregon.