Dr. Amina Gautier

Dr. Amina GautierMarquette University

Marquette Hall, 215

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-6859amina.gautier@marquette.edu

Professor and 2023-2024 AMUW Chair in Humanistic Studies

English

Amina Gautier is the 2023-2024 AMUW Chair in Humanistic Studies at Marquette University.

Gautier is the author of three award-winning short story collections: The Loss of All Lost Things (2016), which won the Elixir Press Award in Fiction, The Phillis Wheatley Award, The International Latino Book Award, The National Indie Excellence Award, a Silver Medal “IPPY” Award in Northeast Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Paterson Prize, The John Gardner Award, The Hurston/Wright Award, and shortlisted for the William Saroyan Award, and The St. Francis College Literary Prize; Now We Will Be Happy (2014), which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, the International Latino Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Legacy Award, the USA Best Book Award in African American Fiction, the International Book Award, a Silver IPPY Award in Multicultural Fiction, a Florida Authors and Publishers Association Award Gold Medal in Short Fiction, and was Long-listed for The Chautauqua Prize in Fiction; and At-Risk (2011), which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and received an Eric Hoffer Legacy Award and a First Horizon Award. For her body of work, Gautier has received the Blackwell Prize, the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, and the PEN/MALAMUD AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE SHORT STORY. Gautier is the first African American woman to win the prestigious PEN/MALAMUD award since its inception in 1988.

Gautier has published a record one hundred and fifty short stories. Her fiction appears in American Short Fiction, Boston Review, Callaloo, Cincinnati Review, Latino Book Review, Los Angeles Review, Oxford American, Southern Review, and TriQuarterly, among other places. Gautier’s awards for her individual short stories include the Able Muse Prize in Fiction, the Anton Chekhov Award for Very Short Fiction, the Craft Flash Fiction Prize, the Crazyhorse Prize, the Danahy Fiction Prize, the Rick DeMarinis Prize, the Jack Dyer Prize, the New Millennium Writings Flash Fiction Prize, the Raleigh Review Flash Fiction Prize, the William Richey Prize, the River Styx Schlafly Microfiction Award, and the Lamar York Prize in Fiction.

Gautier’s work has been extensively reprinted, appearing in All About Skin! Women Writers of Color; Best African American Fiction 2009; Best African American Fiction 2010; Best Small Fictions, Borderlands & Crossroads: Writing the Motherland; Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up to No Good; The Danahy Fiction Prize: Ten Years Ten Stories 2007-2017; Discoveries: New Writing from The Iowa Review; Forward 21^st Century Flash Fiction Anthology; Home in Florida: LatinX Writers and The Literature of Uprootedness; The Line-Up: 20 Provocative Women Writers; Love in the Time of Time’s Up; New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2008; On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library; The Notre Dame Review: The First Ten Years; The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Contemporary Women Writers on Forerunners in Fiction; Voices; What’s Next?:Short Fiction in Time of Change, and Welcome to The Neighborhood. 

Gautier’s critical essays and reviews appear in African American Review, The Cambridge Companion to The American Short Story, Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass, Daedalus, Journal of American History, Libraries and Culture, Nineteenth Century Contexts, and Whitman Noir: Essays on Black America and the Good Grey Poet.

Gautier has been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the American Antiquarian Society, the Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, the Camargo Foundation, the Chateau de Lavigny, Dora Maar House/Brown Foundation, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, MacDowell Colony, the Sewanee Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Most recently, she was the 2021 Alice F. Adams Charitable Fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, a 2022-2023 Letras Boricuas Fellow, and the 2021-2024 University of Miami Gabelli Senior Scholar.

Her fourth short story collection, The Best That You Can Do, winner of the Soft Skull Kimbilio Publishing Prize, is forthcoming early 2024.

Research Interests

• African American Literature
• 19^th century American Literature
• Short Fiction Studies
• Charles Chesnutt
• Film Studies
• Creative Writing Pedagogy

Publications

• The Best That You Can Do. Soft Skull Press, Soft Skull x Kimbilio Prize in Fiction, 2024.
• “The African American Short Story from Reform to Renaissance.” The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story. (2023): 206-220. Cambridge University Press, Ed. Gavin Jones.
• “Making the American Self and the Self-Made Man in the The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography.” Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass. (2020): 151-167. Salem Press, Ed. Jericho Williams.
• The Loss of All Lost Things. Elixir Press, Elixir Prize in Fiction, 2016.
• Now We Will Be Happy. University of Nebraska Press, Prairie Schooner Book Series Prize in Fiction, 2014.
• At-Risk. University of Georgia Press, Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction Series, 2011.
• “On Post-racial America in the Age of Obama.” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 1 (2011): 90-94. MIT Press.
• “African American Women’s Writings in the Woman’s Building Library.” Libraries and Culture. 41.1 (2006): 55-81. University of Texas Press.

Honors and Awards

                                    International

• The Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation Special Fellowship, The Bogliasco Foundation, Bogliasco, Italy, 2021.
• The Camargo Foundation Core Fellowship, Cassis, France, 2017.
• The Château de Lavigny Fellowship, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2017.
• The Brown Foundation Le Maison Dora Maar/Dora Maar House Fellowship, Menerbes, France, 2016.
• Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, Midlothian, Scotland, 2014.                                   

                                    National

• The Letras Boricuas Fellowship, 2022-2023.
• The University of Miami Gabelli Senior Scholar Award, 2021-2024.
• The Blackwell Prize, 2022.
• The University of Miami Fellowship in the Arts and Humanities Award, 2020.
• The PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, 2018.
• The International Latino Book Award, 2017.
• The Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Fiction, 2017.
• The Chicago Public Library Foundation 21^st Century Award, 2016.
• The International Latino Book Award, 2016.
• The University of Miami Max Orovitz Research Award in the Humanities, 2015-2016.
• The University of Miami Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, 2015-2016.
• The Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty, 2013.
• The William Randolph Hearst Fellowship at The American Antiquarian Society, 2013.
• The Alan Collins Fellowship in Fiction, Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, 2013.
• Illinois Arts Council Artist Project Grant, 2013.
• The Prairie Schooner Book Series Prize, 2013.
• The Walter E. Dakin Fellowship, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, 2012.
• DePaul University Competitive Summer Research Grant, 2011.
• The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, 2010.
• Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Summer Research Fellowship, 2010
• Saint Joseph’s University Faculty Merit Award for Research, 2009-2010.
• Saint Joseph’s University Faculty Summer Research Grant, 2006.
• Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Award Grant, 2005.