Dr. Amina Gautier, an award-winning short story author and creative writing professor in the College of Arts & Sciences English Department, was honored with the 2018 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.
"It's thrilling to see Amina receive the kind of recognition that we in the English Department have known for some time she so richly deserves,” said Associate Professor and Department Chair, Tim Watson. “I'm especially pleased to see her work as a writer of short fiction recognized with this highest honor. Short stories require a rare combination of craft, discipline, and imagination. Amina's brilliant, spare, haunting fiction now takes its rightful place alongside that of other famous winners of the PEN/Malamud award.”
Considered one of the most prestigious awards in North America for short story writers, previous winners of the award include many of the most significant American short fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Grace Paley, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, Edward P. Jones, Richard Ford, Ursula Le Guin, Cynthia Ozick, George Saunders, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
"In the four years alone that I’ve been here, I’ve published two books, received three international fellowships, and won a total of fifteen awards, so I definitely think it’s fitting for me to have received the PEN/Malamud award in recognition of my productivity and for my body of work,” said Gautier. “It’s good to know that my talent and hard work have not gone unnoticed in the arts community or in the world of readers."
Gautier is the author of three award-winning short story collections: At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy and The Loss of All Lost Things. At-Risk was awarded the Flannery O’Connor Award, and the Eric Hoffer Legacy Award in Fiction. Now We Will Be Happy was awarded the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the International Latino Book Award, the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Award, the Royal Palm Literary Award, an International Book Award, a USA Best Book Award, a Silver Medal IPPY award, and the Eric Hoffer Legacy Award in Fiction.
The Loss of All Lost Things was awarded the Elixir Press Award in Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, the International Latino Book Award, three Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Awards, the Royal Palm Literary Awards, was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award, the Paterson Prize, and the John Gardner Award.
Gautier is a recipient of fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Brown Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, the Chateau de Lavigny, Hawthornden, the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She is also a scholar of 19th-century American literature, and her scholarly reviews and essays appear in African American Review, Daedalus, Journal of American History, Libraries and Culture,
