Life

D'Ambrosio grew up in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

, and now lives in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

. He attended Oberlin College

Oberlin College

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

 and graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he has been a visiting faculty member. D'Ambrosio is on the faculty of Portland State University's MFA Program in Creative Writing and is also an instructor at the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

He has published two collections of short stories, The Point (1995) and The Dead Fish Museum (2006). He has also published a collection of essays Orphans (2005). His writings have appeared in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, The Stranger (newspaper)

The Stranger (newspaper)

The Stranger is an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle, Washington, USA. It runs a blog known as Slog.-History:The Stranger was founded by Tim Keck, who had previously co-founded the satirical newspaper The Onion, and cartoonist James Sturm. Its first issue came out on September 23, 1991...

, The Paris Review, Zoetrope All-Story, and A Public Space

A Public Space

A Public Space is a quarterly English-language literary magazine based in Brooklyn, New York. First published in April 2006. A Public Space publishes fiction, poetry, essays and art...

.

Little Brown published D'Ambrosio's first short story collection, The Point in 1995. The collection was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award

Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award

The Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award is awarded annually to a novel or book of short stories by an American author who has not previously published a book of fiction. The award is named after Ernest Hemingway and funded by the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, which has been administered by the Hemingway...

 and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Orphans, a collection of essays, was published in 2005 by Clear Cut Press

Clear Cut Press

- About :Clear Cut Press was founded by novelist Matthew Stadler and Up Records co-founder Rich Jensen in 2002. Jensen began talking to Stadler while taking a poetry class in 1997. Their mutual interest in cultural movements and the role of books lead to a discussion resulting in the press...

. Ten years after his first collection, "The Point," Knopf published second book of fiction, The Dead Fish Museum. Six of the eight stories in the collection were originally published in The New Yorker. The book was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. In October 2006, D'Ambrosio was awarded the prestigious Whiting Writers' Award

Whiting Writers' Award

The Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...

. Among other honors, he has received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and is presently a USA Rasmuson Fellow. The Rasumuson Fellowship earned him a $50,000 grant from United States Artists

United States Artists

United States Artists is an independent nonprofit and nongovernmental philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles, California and dedicated to supporting the work of living American artists by the granting of cash awards, called USA Fellowships...

, a relatively new organization that supports and promotes the work of American artists in a variety of disciplines.

The Dead Fish Museum won the 2007 Washington State Book Award

Washington State Book Award

The Washington State Book Awards are presented annually in recognition of notable books written by Washington authors in the previous year.This literary awards program was established in 1967 as the Governor's Writers Awards. The program was based at the Washington State Library in Olympia...

 for Fiction.

Short story collections

• The Point (1995)
  • "The Point", originally published in The New Yorker, 1990-10-01.
  • "Her Real Name", originally published in The Barcelona Review, Spring 1993.
  • "American Bullfrog"
  • "Jacinta", originally published in Story
  • "All Aboard", originally published in The Cimarron Review
  • "Lyricism", originally published in Story (as "A Christmas Carol")
  • "Open House", originally published in The Paris Review, Winter 1994.
• The Dead Fish Museum (2006)
  • "The High Divide", originally published in The New Yorker, 2003-02-03.
  • "Drummond & Son", originally published in The New Yorker, 2002-10-07.
  • "Screenwriter", originally published in The New Yorker, 2003-12-08.
  • "Up North", originally published in The New Yorker, 2005-02-14.
  • "The Scheme of Things", originally published in The New Yorker, 2004-10-11.
  • "The Dead Fish Museum", originally published in A Public Space, Spring 2005.
  • "Blessing", originally published in Zoetrope: All-Story, Winter 2005.
  • "The Bone Game", originally published in The New Yorker, 2006-03-06.

Essay collections

• Orphans (2005)
  • "Documents," originally published in The New Yorker, 2002-06-17.

Uncollected short stories and essays

• "The Allegorical Tourist: Jonathan Raban Straddles a Sea and Its Meanings", published in The Stranger
  The Stranger (newspaper)
  The Stranger is an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle, Washington, USA. It runs a blog known as Slog.-History:The Stranger was founded by Tim Keck, who had previously co-founded the satirical newspaper The Onion, and cartoonist James Sturm. Its first issue came out on September 23, 1991...
  
  , 1999-12-09.
• "Train in Vain", published in The New Yorker, 2004-06-14.
• "Summer of '42", published in The New Yorker, 2007-06-11.

Reviews

...in the last few years, writers in this book review have lamented the decline of slice-of-life realism, pronouncing it dead at least once. But pronouncing things dead is the job of critics, and the truth is that understated realism remains a robust tradition, as evidenced by the work of, among others, Charles D'Ambrosio, whose stories frequently appear in The New Yorker. Eleven years after the publication of his first book, "The Point," and one year after his book of essays, "Orphans," along comes "The Dead Fish Museum," which largely traverses the same Carveresque territory staked out in his debut: the charged relationships between fathers and sons, drifters and workers, in the outskirts of the American Northwest.

External links

• Interview at Powells.com. Accessed 3 July 2006.
• Excerpt from "The Dead Fish Museum A Public Space
  A Public Space
  A Public Space is a quarterly English-language literary magazine based in Brooklyn, New York. First published in April 2006. A Public Space publishes fiction, poetry, essays and art...
  
  , April, 2006.
• Rasmuson 2007 Fellows
• United States Artists arts advocacy organization.
• Interview with D'Ambrosio from The Quarterly Conversation.
• "Tribute to Philip Roth", ID 204924-1, C-SPAN