Melissa Pritchard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Melissa Pritchard | |
|---|---|
| Born | Melissa Brown |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Brown University |
Melissa Pritchard (née Brown) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and journalist.
Melissa Brown was born on December 12, 1948, in San Mateo, California. She grew up in San Mateo, Burlingame and Menlo Park and attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in Atherton, California. Her parents are Clarence John Brown, Jr., and Helen Lorraine Reilly Brown; she has one sibling, Penny Lee Byrd. She graduated in 1970 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in Comparative Religions and in 1995, received an M.F.A. from Vermont College. Her first marriage of five years was to Daniel Hachez, musician and luthier, her second of eleven years to Mark Pritchard, father of her two daughters, Noelle Katarina Pritchard (b. 1977) and Caitlin Skye Pritchard (b. 1982). She began to write fiction in Evanston, Illinois, and her first book, Spirit Seizures, published by the University of Georgia Press in 1987, received the Flannery O’Connor Award and the Carl Sandburg Award. Stories from that collection received an O. Henry Prize Stories Award (“A Private Landscape,”) the James D. Phelan Award and an honorary citation from the PEN/Nelson Algren Award. She raised her daughters in Evanston, Illinois, Taos, New Mexico, and Tempe, Arizona, where she currently teaches at Arizona State University.[1][2]
Awards and honors
- 1980, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1988 Illinois Arts Council Awards for Fiction
- 1982 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
- 1982 James D. Phelan Award, San Francisco Foundation, judge Robert Pinsky
- 1984 Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, “A Private Landscape”
- 1987 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, Spirit Seizures
- 1987 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Spirit Seizures
- 1987 PEN/Nelson Algren Award, honorary citation, finalist, judge Stanley Elkin
- 1988 Carl Sandburg Literary Award, Spirit Seizures
- 1988 D.H. Lawrence Fellowship, finalist
- 1988 Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, finalist
- 1991 The Best of the West, “Hallie: How Love is Found, When the Heart is Lost”
- 1995 The Claudia Ortese Memorial Lecture Prize, University of Florence, Italy
- 1995 New York Times Editor’s Choice, The Instinct for Bliss
- 1996 PEN/West Award Finalist, The Instinct for Bliss
- 1996 The Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, University of Rochester, The Instinct for Bliss
- 1996 The Pushcart Prize, “The Instinct for Bliss”
- 1998 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Selene of the Spirits
- 1998 Howard Foundation Fellowship, Brown University
- 2000 Prize Stories: The O. Henry Award, “Salve Regina”
- 2001 The Pushcart Prize, “Funktionslust”
- 2002 NPR Summer Reading List, Disappearing Ingenue
- 2004 Best Books of 2004, Chicago Tribune, Late Bloomer
- 2004 Southwestern Books of the Year, Late Bloomer
- 2007 Spirit of Mater Award, first annual alumna award, Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy (formerly Convent of the Sacred Heart)
- 2008 Hawthornden International Fellowship, Midlothian, Scotland
- 2010 Advisory Board Member, Afghan Women's Writing Project and Founder, The Ashton Goodman Fund
- 2011 Bogliasco International Fellowship, Liguria, Italy
- 2011 Faculty Achievement Award for Defining Edge Research in Performance and Art Works, Arizona State University
- 2012 Fondation Ledig-Rowohlt Fellowship, Lavigny/Lausanne, Switzerland
- 2013 Founders' Day Faculty Teaching Award, Arizona State University
- 2014 Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing Faculty Development Grant
- 2014 The Atlantic Journalism Award, “100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism,” for “Still, God Helps You: Memories of a Sudanese Child Slave”
- 2014 Finalist, Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on a Disability, for “Still God Helps You: Memories of a Sudanese Child Slave"
