Sylvia Watanabe is an American writer of Japanese origin. She obtained a BA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and an MA from Binghamton University. Her collection of ten short stories, Talking to the Dead received acclaim for a number of those pieces, and led the title story to become included among five finalists nominated for the 1993 PEN Faulkner Award. [1] In, "Change and Tragedy in a Hawaiian Village," it was reviewed by R.A. Sasaki in the September 6, 1992, San Francisco Chronicle, regarding the tensions between culture and tradition and change and modernization. [2]
She has also received an NEA fellowship, a Josephine Miles PEN Oakland award, and an Arts Council grant. Watanabe's writings have also appeared in numerous anthologies, including those for the O. Henry Award and the Pushcart Prize.
Watanabe is also noted for her work on Asian American fiction. Along with the late publisher Carol Bruchac, [3] she co-edited two volumes of Asian American fiction titled Home to Stay and Into the Fire. She was an assistant professor in creative writing at Oberlin College, promoted to professor for the 2015-2016 academic year, but has since retired. [4]
Watanabe was born in Wailuku, Maui, in 1953. She was raised in Kailua, Oahu. Her grandfather was a Presbyterian Minister for 35 years in Maui, who despite that, was interned in a Second World War camp in New Mexico. She earned a B.A. degree in Art History from the University of Hawaii in 1980, and a Master's in creative writing and English from SUNY Binghamton in 1985. Her husband, William Osborne, taught in Michigan. [5]
The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.
Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri is a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian.
Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.
Lorrie Moore is an American writer, critic, and essayist. She is best known for her short stories, some of which have won major awards. Since 1984, she has also taught creative writing.
Susan Choi is an American novelist.
Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. She was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.
Ron Hansen is an American novelist, essayist, and professor. He is known for writing literary westerns exploring the people and history of the American heartland, notably The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (1983), which was adapted into an acclaimed film.
Michael Byers is an American writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and of the University of Michigan Creative Writing MFA Program. His first book, The Coast of Good Intentions, is a collection of short stories set in his native Pacific Northwest. His second book, Long for this World, is set in his hometown of Seattle, Washington, and tells the story of a geneticist facing an ethical dilemma that might lead to a cure for a fatal childhood disease. His third book, Percival's Planet, a novel about the discovery of Pluto in 1930, was published in August 2010. His short story "Sibling Rivalry" was included in The Best American Short Stories 2020.
Monique T.D. Truong is a Vietnamese American writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Yale University and Columbia University School of Law. She has written multiple books, and her first novel, The Book of Salt, was published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2003. It was a national bestseller, and was awarded the 2003 Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award. She has also written Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, along with Barbara Tran and Luu Truong Khoi, and numerous essays and works of short fiction.
Diana Abu-Jaber is an American author and a professor at Portland State University.
Jayne Anne Phillips is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer who was born in the small town of Buckhannon, West Virginia.
Lee Upton is an American poet, fiction writer, and literary critic. She earned a BA in journalism at Michigan State University, a master of fine arts (MFA) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Program for Poets & Writers, and a PhD in English literature at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Elizabeth Tallent is an American fiction writer, academic, and essayist.
Fae Myenne Ng is an American novelist and short story writer.
Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. Her short story collection Wednesday's Child was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.
Joan Silber is an American novelist and short story writer. She won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the 2018 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel Improvement.
Carolyn Ferrell is an American short story writer and novelist.
Elizabeth Eslami is an Iranian American writer of novels, essays, and short stories.
Deesha Philyaw is an American author, columnist, and public speaker.
Julie Schumacher is an American novelist, essayist, short story writer and academic. She is a Regents Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Minnesota. Schumacher specializes in creative writing, contemporary fiction, and children's literature.