May 5, 2006
SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) – Tom Bailey, associate professor of English and creative writing at Susquehanna University, has been named the winner in the fiction category of the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters competition. The award puts Bailey in league with such authors as Walker Percy, Richard Ford and Rick Bass.
Bailey’s prize-winning entry is The Grace That Keeps This World. Published in October by Shaye Areheart Books from the Crown Division of Random House, the book is Bailey’s first novel. Based on his Pushcart Prize-winning short story “Snow Dreams,” originally published in DoubleTake magazine and later included in his first collection of short stories, Crow Man (Etruscan Press, 2003), the novel was inspired by a radio report of a tragic hunting accident in upstate New York where Bailey held his first teaching appointment.
Each year, the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters honors the original works of artists, writers and musicians from the state. Bailey was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. Growing up he lived in North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Virginia and West Virginia.
Prior to joining the faculty of Susquehanna University in 1999, Bailey taught in
the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University. His work has earned him a Newhouse Award from the John Gardner Foundation and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for fiction. His writing has been anthologized in New Stories from the South and been noted in The Best American Short Stories. In addition to Crow Man and The Grace That Keeps This World,
Bailey has published two books on writing with Oxford University Press, On Writing Short Stories and The Short Story Writer’s Companion. He is a regular contributor to The Writer magazine and is currently working on his third novel, tentatively titled Sunny Hills. Bailey’s second novel, Cotton Song, will also be published by Shaye Areheart Books at Random House’s Crown Publishing Division in the fall of 2006.
To read more about Bailey’s work and the creative writing program at Susquehanna University, go to http://www.susqu.edu/Writers.
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Contact: Victoria Kidd
570-372-4119
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