February 2022
Author of eight published works of fiction as well as a biography and volume of essays, my first story collection, Spirit Seizures, received the 1987 Flannery O’Connor Award, the Carl Sandburg Award, an O. Henry Prize, and the James D. Phelan Award from the San Francisco Foundation. A PEN/Nelson Algren finalist, Spirit Seizures was named both a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book of the Year.
A second collection, The Instinct for Bliss, also a New York Times Editor’s Choice, was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize from the University of Rochester and the Claudia Ortese Prize in North American Literature from the University of Florence, Florence, Italy. Stories from that collection won Pushcart and Best of the West prizes.
My first historical novel, Selene of the Spirits, (edited and published by Joyce Carol Oates,) was compared in a New York Times book review to John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and received a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Prize.
Stories from a third collection, Disappearing Ingénue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard, won both Pushcart and O. Henry Prizes.
My satiric novel, Late Bloomer, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was named a Chicago Tribune “Best Book of the Year.”
A fourth collection, The Odditorium, was named a San Francisco Chronicle “Best Book of the Year,” as well as an O, The Oprah Magazine’s Book of the Week.
A second historical novel, Palmerino, was a Lambda Literary “New and Noteworthy Book,” a Publisher’s Weekly “Big Indie Book,” a “Top Title” in O, The Oprah Magazine. Inspired by the nineteenth century British feminist writer Vernon Lee, Palmerino was named a “Top Title” by The American Library Association’s “Over the Rainbow” LGBT list.
A Solemn Pleasure, the inaugural title in Bellevue Literary Press’s essay series, was named a “Best Books for Writers” by Poets and Writers, and a Publishers Weekly “Top Ten in Essays, Literary Biography and Criticism.” Praised in Lit Hub as a “Best Book about Books,”
A Solemn Pleasure received a starred review from Library Journal, and was praised by Kirkus as “heartfelt…bear(s) powerful witness to suffering, compassion and transcendence.”
A five-time winner of Pushcart and O. Henry Prizes and consistently cited in Best American Short Stories, my fiction and non-fiction pieces appear in literary journals, anthologies, college textbooks, magazines and online sites like Byliner, Longform, Ulyces and Longreads. Awarded fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Foundation, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation, the Hawthornden and Bogliasco Foundations, I have published in over eighty journals, including The Paris Review (3x), Ploughshares, A Public Space, Conjunctions, Agni, Ecotone and The Gettysburg Review, as well as in O, The Oprah Magazine, the Wilson Center’s Wilson Quarterly, Amtrak’s Arrive Magazine, The Nation, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. A Katherine Schneider Journalism Award finalist, my feature piece in The Wilson Quarterly on a former Sudanese child slave, was recognized in the Atlantic Monthly’s 2013 Best of Journalism Awards.
As the 2016 Carson McCullers Fellow, I lived in Carson McCullers’ childhood home in Columbus, Georgia, while working on an historical novel, TEMPEST. I have completed a novel about the founder of modern day nursing, Florence Nightingale, BURNING BRIGHT, along with a fifth story collection, HOTEL MAJESTIC.
Guest editors James Wood and Claire Messud published Hotel Majestic in Ploughshares Summer 2016 Issue; the story received a 2018 Pushcart Prize XLII Special Mention. The Carnation Milk Palace, published in Ecotone, was awarded a 2017 Pushcart Prize XLI, and in 2020 was included in the Short Story Advent Calendar along with other writers including Anthony Doerr, Maggie Shipstead, Lauen Groff and Rachel Kushner.
Mrs. Wisdom, published in the Southwest Review received the journal’s McGinnis-Ritchie Fiction Prize as well as a 2016 Best American Short Stories “Distinguished Story” citation. Mrs. Wisdom appears in the New York Public Library’s Subway Stories, (www.subwaylibrary.org) a literary collaboration with the New York City Transit System. Palace of Vicissitude and Rose Ivoire appeared respectively in The Gettysburg Review and Agni. Three recently completed stories in the collection are under submission.
