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]
Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri is an 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 writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank With You, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories. Ford received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1996 for Independence Day. Ford's novel Wildlife was adapted into a 2018 film of the same name. He won the 2018 Park Kyong-ni Prize.
Lorrie Moore is an American writer.
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.
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.
Peter Ho Davies, is a contemporary British writer of Welsh and Chinese descent.
Karen Joy Fowler is an American author of science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. Her work often centers on the nineteenth century, the lives of women, and alienation.
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.
Deborah Eisenberg is an American short story writer, actress and teacher. She is a professor of writing at Columbia University.
Fae Myenne Ng is an American novelist, and short story writer.
Richard John McCann was a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He lived in Washington, D.C., where he was a longtime professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University.
Susan Deer Cloud, a mixed lineage Catskill Native, is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative essays.
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, and the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End. 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.
Wilton Brad Watson was an American author and academic. Originally from Mississippi, he worked and lived in Alabama, Florida, California, Boston, and Wyoming. He was a professor at the University of Wyoming until his death. Watson published four books – two novels and two collections of short stories – to critical acclaim.
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American novelist. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
Akil Kumarasamy is an American author and an assistant professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences-Newark. She won the Annual Bard Fiction Prize for her collection of short stories, Half Gods, and will be a writer in residence at Bard College for a semester during the 2021-22 academic year.
Deesha Philyaw is an American author, columnist, and public speaker. Her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction and won The Story Prize. Her personal essay writing topics include race, sex, gender, and pop culture.
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.