Rea Award for the Short Story
Encyclopedia
The Rea Award for the Short Story is an annual award given to a living American
or Canadian
author chosen for unusually significant contributions to short story
fiction.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
or Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
author chosen for unusually significant contributions to 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...
fiction.
The Award
The Rea Award is named after Michael M. Rea, who was engaged in the real estate and radio industries, and was a passionate writer and collector of short stories. In 1986 he established the award, setting up the Dungannon Foundation to administer it. Rea died in 1996 and his widow, Elizabeth Richebourg Rea, currently administers the award process. A jury of three notable literary figures is selected and given complete independence to choose a winner of the award, which includes a grant of $30,000.The winners
- 1986 Cynthia OzickCynthia OzickCynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. She is the niece of the Hebraist Abraham Regelson.-Background:Cynthia Shoshana Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children...
- 1987 Robert CooverRobert CooverRobert Lowell Coover is an American author and professor in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.-Life and works:...
- 1988 Donald BarthelmeDonald BarthelmeDonald Barthelme was an American author known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston , co-founder of Fiction Donald...
- 1989 Tobias WolffTobias WolffTobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American author. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life , and his short stories. He has also written two novels.-Biography:Wolff was born in 1945 in Birmingham, Alabama...
- 1990 Joyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
- 1991 Paul BowlesPaul BowlesPaul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
- 1992 Eudora WeltyEudora WeltyEudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...
- 1993 Grace PaleyGrace PaleyGrace Paley was an American-Jewish short story writer, poet, and political activist.-Biography:Grace Paley was born in the Bronx to Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside, who anglicized the family name from Gutseit on immigrating from Ukraine. Her father was a doctor. The family spoke Russian and...
- 1994 Tillie OlsenTillie OlsenTillie Lerner Olsen was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.-Biography:...
- 1995 Richard FordRichard FordRichard Ford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.-Early...
- 1996 Andre DubusAndre DubusAndre Dubus, II was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer. Dubus is recognized as one of the most prolific American short-story writers in the 20th century.-Early life and education:...
- 1997 Gina BerriaultGina BerriaultGina Berriault , was an American novelist and short story writer.Berriault was born in Long Beach, California, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents...
- 1998 John Edgar WidemanJohn Edgar WidemanJohn Edgar Wideman is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.-Early life:...
- 1999 Joy Williams
- 2000 Deborah Eisenberg
- 2001 Alice MunroAlice MunroAlice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize...
- 2002 Mavis GallantMavis GallantMavis Leslie Gallant, , née Mavis Leslie Young is a Canadian writer.-Biography:An only child, Gallant was born in Montreal, Quebec. Her father died when she was young, and her mother remarried. Gallant received her education at seventeen different public, convent, and French-language boarding...
- 2003 Antonya NelsonAntonya NelsonAntonya Nelson is an American author and teacher of creative writing who writes primarily short stories.-Life and education:Antonya Nelson was born January 6, 1961 in Wichita, Kansas....
- 2004 Lorrie MooreLorrie MooreLorrie Moore is an American fiction writer known mainly for her humorous and poignant short stories.-Biography:...
- 2005 Ann BeattieAnn BeattieAnn Beattie is an American short story writer and novelist. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form. Her work has been compared to that of Alice Adams, J.D. Salinger,...
- 2006 John UpdikeJohn UpdikeJohn Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
- 2007 Stuart DybekStuart Dybek-Personal life:Dybek was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Chicago's Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dybek graduated from St. Rita of Cascia High School in 1959...
- 2008 Amy HempelAmy HempelAmy Hempel is an American short story writer, journalist, and university professor at Brooklyn College.-Life:Hempel was born in Chicago, Illinois...
- 2009 Mary RobisonMary RobisonMary Cennamo Robison is an American short story writer and novelist. She has published four collections of stories, and four novels, including her 2001 novel Why Did I Ever, winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. Her most recent novel, released in 2009, is One D.O.A., One...
- 2010 James SalterJames SalterJames Salter is an American novelist and short-story writer. Once a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he abandoned the military profession in 1957 after successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters.After a brief career at film writing and film directing, Salter...