| Rank: | Assistant Professor |
| Office Location: | 3122 Tawes Hall |
| Office Hours: | M 3:30-4:30, W 12:30-1:30 |
| Email: | This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
| Phone: | 301-405-9652 |
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Profile
| Degree: | MFA, University of Virginia, 1994 |
| Area Groups: | Creative Writing |
| Major Publications: | In The Arms of Our Elders (Carolina Wren, 1995); I Got Somebody in Staunton (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2005) |
| Articles: | Writing has appeared in journals such as Ploughshares, African American Review, Kenyon Review, New Letters, Callaloo, Colorado Review, and Blackbird. Stories reprinted in several anthologies, including Bedford Guide for College Writers, Cry of An Occasion (LSU Press), Speak My Name (Beacon), Gumbo (Harlem Moon/Doubleday) and Best American Short Stories of 1996 (HoughtonMifflin), and What the Thunder Meant, a Finnish anthology of ten writers culled from the Best American Short Stories series. |
| Teaching & Service: | Associate Professor of English, Colgate University, 2005-07; Allan K. Smith Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Trinity College 1997-2000; Assistant Professorships: Denison University, Mary Washington College, College of the Bahamas.
Writer in Residence, MFA Program, University of Houston, 2007; Editor/presenter of Bahamian Literature, Caribbean Community Heads of State Conference, Bahamas, 2001; Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Albany State University, 2001; Cockefair Chair Writer in Residence, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1998; Board Member, Hurston/Wright Foundation, 1997-2001; Share Our Strength/Writer's Harvest Organizer, 1996-1998; Grants review panelist for Massachusetts Cultural Council and South Carolina Arts Commission; Writing Workshops based on Current Exhibits, Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 1997 & 2000 |
| Fellowships & Prizes: | Literature Fellowship in Prose, National Endowment for the Arts, 2008; Individual Artist Fellowship, Virginia Commission for the Arts, 1996; Best American Short Stories, 1996; Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Honorable Mention Prize for Fiction, 1994
Honors for I Got Somebody in Staunton: Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction, 2006; Fiction Honor Book for 2005, Black Caucus, American Library Association; one of 25 Best Books, Kirkus Reviews, 2005; selected as 2006 GoRead Book for City of Richmond, VA Honors for In the Arms of Our Elders: Special Award for New Writing, Fellowship of Southern Writers, 1997; Roll of Honor for 1994, American Literary Biography Yearbook; Sonja H. Stone Prize for Fiction, Carolina Wren Press, 1993 |