Jamel Brinkley
American writer
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Jamel Brinkley is an American writer. His debut story collection, A Lucky Man (2018), was the winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award, The Story Prize, the John Leonard Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He currently teaches fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award (2019)
Jamel Brinkley | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | |
| Notable awards | Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence (2019) PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award (2019) |
Biography
Jamel Brinkley was raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, New York City. He graduated from Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he teaches.[1][2][3]
His first book, A Lucky Man, is set in New York City and explores themes of family relationships, love, loss, complex identity, and masculinity. NPR said of the collection, "[It] may include only nine stories, but in each of them, Brinkley gives us an entire world."[4][5]
His second book, Witness, won the Maya Angelou Book Award in 2024.[6]
Brinkley is an alumnus of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and was also a Kimbilio Fellow in Fiction.[7] He graduated with an MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was the 2016–2017 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a 2018–2020 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University.[5][8][9]
Awards
| Year | Title | Award | Cateogory | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | A Lucky Man | National Book Award | Fiction | Finalist | [10] |
| National Book Critics Circle Award | John Leonard Prize | Finalist | [11] | ||
| The Story Prize | — | Finalist | [12] | ||
| 2019 | Aspen Words Literary Prize | — | Longlisted | [13] | |
| Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence | — | Won | [14] | ||
| Hurston/Wright Legacy Award | Début Fiction | Finalist | [15] | ||
| PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award | — | Won | [16] | ||
| PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize | — | Finalist | [17][18] | ||
| 2024 | Witness | Aspen Words Literary Prize | — | Shortlisted | [19] |
| PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction | — | Finalist | [20] |
Publications
- A Lucky Man. Graywolf Press. 2018. ISBN 9781555978051.
- Witness: Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2023. ISBN 9780374607036.