He is the author of the novels Deus Ex Machina, Lady Lazarus, and The Gringa[1] and his short fiction and essays have been published in Esquire, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Fence, and One Story.
[citation needed] Altschul received his BA from Brown University in 1991 and an MFA at UC Irvine in 1997.
From 2009 to 2015, he was an associate professor at San Jose State University and the director of their Center for Literary Arts.
He has written for political venues including The Huffington Post and Truthdig, was a contributing author of Where to Invade Next (McSweeney's, 2008), and was the co-organizer of the Progressive Reading Series, a series of literary readings in San Francisco that raised money for progressive political candidates from 2004 to 2008.
From 2008 to 2011 he was the founding books editor of The Rumpus, an online magazine started by Stephen Elliott in late 2008.