Dr. Luscher is a Southern California native, born in San Diego, who migrated to the South for graduate school and remained there in his early career before being hired at UNK in 1995, as Chair of the department and a specialist in American literature. His areas of expertise include Realist, Modernist, and Contemporary American Literature, as well as the short story and the short story sequence/ cycle. The author of John Updike: A Study of the Short Fiction, he has published a number of essays on Updike’s stories and is a member of the Board of Directors of the John Updike Society, as well as an editorial Board member of the John Updike Review. He has published essays the short fiction by Ernest Gaines, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Clark Blaise, Robert Olen Butler, and other American writes. He has served as Faculty Coordinator of the Thompson Scholars Learning Community since the program’s inception in 2008, and received the Pratt-Heins Faculty Award for Service in 2015.