Melissa Pritchard - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Melissa Pritchard is an American short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

writer, novelist, essayist, and journalist.

Life

Melissa Pritchard (nee Melissa Brown) was born on December 12 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, Penelope 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

Arizona State University

Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...

Awards and Honors

2011 Bogliasco International Fellowship, Liguria, Italy
2011 Faculty Achievement Award for Defining Edge Research in Performance and Art Works, Arizona State University
2010 Advisory Board Member, Afghan Women's Writing Project and Founder, The Ashton Goodman Fund
2008 Hawthornden International Fellowship, Midlothian, Scotland
2007 Spirit of Mater Award, first annual alumna award, Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy (formerly Convent of the Sacred Heart)
2004 Best Books of 2004, Chicago Tribune, Late Bloomer
2004 Southwestern Books of the Year, Late Bloomer
2002 NPR Summer Reading List, Disappearing Ingenue
2001 The Pushcart Prize, “Funktionslust”
2000 Prize Stories: The O. Henry Award, “Salve Regina”
1998 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Selene of the Spirits
1998 Howard Foundation Fellowship, Brown University
1996 PEN/West Award Finalist, The Instinct for Bliss
1996 The Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, University of Rochester, The Instinct for Bliss
1995 New York Times Editor’s Choice, The Instinct for Bliss
1996 The Pushcart Prize, “The Instinct for Bliss”
1995 The Claudia Ortese Memorial Lecture Prize, University of Florence, Italy
1991 The Best of the West, “Hallie: How Love is Found, When the Heart is Lost”
1988 Carl Sandburg Literary Award, Spirit Seizures
1988 D.H. Lawrence Fellowship, finalist
1988 Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, finalist
1987 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction
Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction
The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction is an annual prize awarded by the University of Georgia Press named in honor of the American short story writer and novelist Flannery O'Connor....

, Spirit Seizures
1987 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Spirit Seizures
1987 PEN/Nelson Algren Award, honorary citation, finalist, judge Stanley Elkin
1980, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1988 Illinois Arts Council Awards for Fiction
1984 Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, “A Private Landscape”
1982 National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

Fellowship
1982 James D. Phelan Award, San Francisco Foundation, judge Robert Pinsky

Novels

Late Bloomer (NY: Doubleday, 2004), starred review, Publisher’s Weekly; Best Books of 2004, Chicago Tribune; Southwestern Books of the Year, 2004; "Best of 2004," Florida Sun Sentinel. ISBN=9780385721929
Selene of the Spirits (NJ: Ontario Review Press, 1998), Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers Award, 1998. ISBN=9780865380943
Phoenix (NY: Cane Hill Press, 1991). ISBN=9780943433080

Short Story Collections

The Odditorium (NY: Bellevue Literary Press, 2012)
Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard (NY: Doubleday, 2002), NPR Annual Summer Reading List Selection, 2002. ISBN=9780385503037
The Instinct for Bliss (MA: Zoland Books, 1995), The Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, New York Times Editor’s Choice. ISBN=9780944072790
Spirit Seizures (GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987), The Flannery O’Connor and Carl Sandburg Awards, New York Times Notable Book. ISBN=9780820309590. Re-published in paperback, University of Georgia Press, 2011

Biography

Devotedly Virginia: The Life of Virginia Galvin Piper (AZ: Piper Charitable Trust, 2008)

Literary Journal

The American Story: Best of Story Quarterly, co-editors Diane Williams and Anne Brashler (NY: Cane Hill Press, 1990)

Select Essays

“Doxology,” The Gettysburg Review, Peter Stitt, editor, 2012
“My, Dachshund, My Dear,” O, The Oprah Magazine, July 2011
“Finding Ashton, A Soldier’s Story,” O, The Oprah Magazine, Tenth Anniversary Issue, May 2010
“A Women’s Garden, Sown in Blood,” The Collagist, Matt Bell, editor, November 2009
“A Solemn Pleasure,” Conjunctions Magazine 51, David Shields, editor, Fall 2008
“The Lost Boys: From Sudan to Phoenix,” feature article, MetroAZ Magazine, Leigh Flayton, editor, Summer 2004

Select Anthologies (as contributor)

“A Solemn Pleasure,” The Inevitable, Contemporary Writers Confront Death, Bradford Morrow and David Shields, editors (NY: W.W. Norton, 2010)
“Desirelessness,” Desire: Women Write about Wanting, Lisa Solod, editor (NY: Seal Press, 2007)
“Funktionslust,” Pushcart Prize XXVI, Larry Henderson, editor (NY: Pushcart Press, 2002)
“Salve Regina,” Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, Larry Dark, editor (NY: Random House, 2000)
“The Instinct for Bliss,” The Prentice Hall Anthology of Women’s Literature (NY: Prentice Hall, 2000)
“Spirit Seizures,” American Gothic Tales, Joyce Carol Oates, editor (NY: Dutton Signet, 1996)
“The Instinct for Bliss,” Mothers: Twenty Stories of Contemporary Motherhood, Katrina Kenison, editor (NY: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1996, paperback 1997). ISBN=9780374213756
“Eating for Theodora,” Walking the Twilight II, Women Writers of the Southwest (AZ: Northland Publishing, 1996)
“The Instinct for Bliss,” Pushcart Prize XX, Bill Henderson, editor (NY: Pushcart Press), 1995. ISBN=9780916366964
“El Ojito del Muerto,” Walking the Twilight, Women Writers of the Southwest (AZ: Northland Publishing, 1994)
“A Graven Space,” The Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as Icon, Radcliffe Biography Series, Christopher Merrill and Ellen Bradbury, editors (MA: Addison Wesley Publishing, 1992)
“La Bete,” The Flannery O’Connor Award: Selected Stories, Charles East, editor (GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992)
“Spirit Seizures,” The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, Larry Dark, editor, (NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991)
“Hallie,” Best of the West 4 (NY: W.W. Norton, 1991)
“A Private Landscape,” Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, William Abrahams, editor (NY: Random House, 1984)

In Translation

Spirit Seizures:

Un Paesaggio Solo Mio (Rome, Italy: Theoria, 1992)
Ataques Espirituales (Barcelona, Spain: Alcor, 1990)

Phoenix:

Phoenix, La Vigna Nascosta series, Mario Materassi, editor (Bari, Italy: Palomar Press, 2007)

The Instinct for Bliss:

The Instinct for Bliss, La Vigna Nascosta series, Mario Materassi, editor (Bari, Italy: Palomar Press, 2012)

“Sweet Feed”:

“Nutrimento Prezioso,” Da Costa a Costa: 12 racconti americani di oggi, editor Mario Materassi (Bari, Italy: Palomar Press, 2004)

Select Keynotes

“The Contemporary American Writer: Curator, Witness, Diviner,” Annual Interdisciplinary Seminar on American Studies, Centro di Studi Americani, Rome, Italy, 2011
“The Rose: A Hero’s Journey,” Commandant’s Speaker Series, Air Force Institute of Technology, Dayton, Ohio, 2010
“The Oblivion of Beauty: Women in Panjshir Province, Afghanistan,” Prague Summer Writers Program, Prague, Czech Republic, 2010
“In the Spirit of Mater,” Alumna Award speech, Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy (formerly Convent of the Sacred Heart,) Atherton, California, 2007
“The Ethics of Fiction,” The Claudia Ortese Memorial Lecture, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 1995
“From Vision to Re-vision,” Santa Fe Writer’s Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1992

Humanitarian Work and Related Awards

Faculty Achievement Award for Defining Edge Research in Performance and Art Works, Arizona State University, 2011
Director, “Out of Silence,” staged reading of Afghan women’s writing by ASU MFA students, Project Humanities, Tempe, Arizona, May 2011
“In My Dreams,” sex trafficking public awareness presentation and choral performance by mezzo-soprano Melissa Walker Glenn, PhD, Orangewood Presbyterian Church, Phoenix, Arizona, February 2011
Founder, The Ashton Goodman Fund, The Afghan Women’s Writing Project, 2010
Advisory Board Member, The Afghan Women’s Writing Project, 2010-present
Workshop Leader, STOP, poetry and art workshop with adolescents rescued from human trafficking, Delhi, India, 2009
Mission Participant, Women for World Health, Cuenca Military Hospital, service award from Rotary International, Cuenca, Ecuador, 2008
Director, Outreach Project, MFA program, Arizona State University, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Phoenix, Arizona, 2008
“Spirit of Mater” first annual alumna award, Sacred Heart Preparatory School, Atherton, California, (formerly Convent of the Sacred Heart) 2007
Workshop Leader, The Daywalka Foundation, Kalam:MarginsWrite poetry workshops with adolescents rescued from human trafficking, Calcutta, India, 2006, 2007, 2009

External links

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