Melissa Pritchard

Melissa Pritchard (née Brown) is an American

• 1980, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1988 Illinois Arts Council Awards for Fiction
• 1982 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• 1982 James D. Phelan Award, San Francisco Foundation, judge Robert Pinsky
• 1984 Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, “A Private Landscape”
• 1987 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, Spirit Seizures
• 1987 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Spirit Seizures
• 1987 PEN/Nelson Algren Award, honorary citation, finalist, judge Stanley Elkin
• 1988 Carl Sandburg Literary Award, Spirit Seizures
• 1988 D.H. Lawrence Fellowship, finalist
• 1988 Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, finalist
• 1991 The Best of the West, “Hallie: How Love is Found, When the Heart is Lost”
• 1995 The Claudia Ortese Memorial Lecture Prize, University of Florence, Italy
• 1995 New York Times Editor’s Choice, The Instinct for Bliss
• 1996 PEN/West Award Finalist, The Instinct for Bliss
• 1996 The Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, University of Rochester, The Instinct for Bliss
• 1996 The Pushcart Prize, “The Instinct for Bliss”
• 1998 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Selene of the Spirits
• 1998 Howard Foundation Fellowship, Brown University
• 2000 Prize Stories: The O. Henry Award, “Salve Regina”
• 2001 The Pushcart Prize, “Funktionslust”
• 2002 NPR Summer Reading List, Disappearing Ingenue
• 2004 Best Books of 2004, Chicago Tribune, Late Bloomer
• 2004 Southwestern Books of the Year, Late Bloomer
• 2007 Spirit of Mater Award, first annual alumna award, Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy (formerly Convent of the Sacred Heart)
• 2008 Hawthornden International Fellowship, Midlothian, Scotland
• 2010 Advisory Board Member, Afghan Women's Writing Project and Founder, The Ashton Goodman Fund
• 2011 Bogliasco International Fellowship, Liguria, Italy
• 2011 Faculty Achievement Award for Defining Edge Research in Performance and Art Works, Arizona State University
• 2012 Fondation Ledig-Rowohlt Fellowship, Lavigny/Lausanne, Switzerland
• 2013 Founders' Day Faculty Teaching Award, Arizona State University
• 2014 Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing Faculty Development Grant
• 2014 The Atlantic Journalism Award, “100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism,” for “Still, God Helps You: Memories of a Sudanese Child Slave”
• 2014 Finalist, Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on a Disability, for “Still God Helps You: Memories of a Sudanese Child Slave"

Works

Novels

• Phoenix (NY: Cane Hill Press, 1991).
  ISBN 978-0-943433-08-0
• Selene of the Spirits (NJ: Ontario Review Press, 1998), Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers Award, 1998.
  ISBN 978-0-86538-094-3
• Late Bloomer (NY: Doubleday, 2004), starred review, Publishers Weekly; Best Books of 2004, Chicago Tribune; Southwestern Books of the Year, 2004; "Best of 2004," Florida Sun Sentinel.
  ISBN 978-0-385-72192-9
• Palmerino (NY:
  ISBN 978-1934137680

• Spirit Seizures (GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987), The Flannery O’Connor and Carl Sandburg Awards, New York Times Notable Book.
  ISBN 978-0-8203-0959-0
  . Re-published in paperback, University of Georgia Press, 2011
• The Instinct for Bliss (MA: Zoland Books, 1995), The Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, New York Times Editor’s Choice.
  ISBN 978-0-944072-79-0
• Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard (NY:
  ISBN 978-0-385-50303-7
• The Odditorium (NY: Bellevue Literary Press, 2012), O, The Oprah Magazine “Title to Pick Up Now” & Oprah.com Book of the Week, San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, Library Journal Best Stories Collection of the Year.
  ISBN 978-1934137376

• “The Lost Boys: From Sudan to Phoenix,” feature article, MetroAZ Magazine, Leigh Flayton, editor, Summer 2004
• “A Solemn Pleasure,” Conjunctions Magazine 51, David Shields, editor, Fall 2008
• “A Women’s Garden, Sown in Blood,” The Collagist, Matt Bell, editor, November 2009
• “Finding Ashton, A Soldier’s Story,” O, The Oprah Magazine, Tenth Anniversary Issue, May 2010
• “My, Dachshund, My Dear,” O, The Oprah Magazine, July 2011
• “Doxology,” The Gettysburg Review, Peter Stitt, editor, 2012
• "Still God Helps You: Memories of a Sudanese Child Slave," The Wilson Quarterly, July 2013

Select Anthologies (as contributor)

• “A Private Landscape,” Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, William Abrahams, editor (NY: Random House, 1984)
• “Hallie,” Best of the West 4 (NY: W.W. Norton, 1991)
• “Spirit Seizures,” The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, Larry Dark, editor, (NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991)
• “La Bete,” The Flannery O’Connor Award: Selected Stories, Charles East, editor (GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992)
• “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)
• “El Ojito del Muerto,” Walking the Twilight, Women Writers of the Southwest (AZ: Northland Publishing, 1994)
• “The Instinct for Bliss,” Pushcart Prize XX, Bill Henderson, editor (NY: Pushcart Press), 1995.
  ISBN 978-0-916366-96-4
• “Eating for Theodora,” Walking the Twilight II, Women Writers of the Southwest (AZ: Northland Publishing, 1996)
• “The Instinct for Bliss,” Mothers: Twenty Stories of Contemporary Motherhood, Katrina Kenison, editor (NY: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1996, paperback 1997).
  ISBN 978-0-374-21375-6
• “Spirit Seizures,” American Gothic Tales, Joyce Carol Oates, editor (NY: Dutton Signet, 1996)
• “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)
• “Funktionslust,” Pushcart Prize XXVI, Larry Henderson, editor (NY: Pushcart Press, 2002)
• “Desirelessness,” Desire: Women Write about Wanting, Lisa Solod, editor (NY: Seal Press, 2007)
• “A Solemn Pleasure,” The Inevitable, Contemporary Writers Confront Death, Bradford Morrow and David Shields, editors (NY: W.W. Norton, 2010)

In Translation

Spirit Seizures:

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

“Sweet Feed”:

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

Phoenix:

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

Select Keynotes

• “From Vision to Re-vision,” Santa Fe Writer’s Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1992
• “The Ethics of Fiction,” The Claudia Ortese Memorial Lecture, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 1995
• “In the Spirit of Mater,” Alumna Award speech, Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy (formerly Convent of the Sacred Heart,) Atherton, California, 2007
• “The Oblivion of Beauty: Women in Panjshir Province, Afghanistan,” Prague Summer Writers Program, Prague, Czech Republic, 2010
• “The Rose: A Hero’s Journey,” Commandant’s Speaker Series, Air Force Institute of Technology, Dayton, Ohio, 2010
• “The Contemporary American Writer: Curator, Witness, Diviner,” Annual Interdisciplinary Seminar on American Studies, Centro di Studi Americani, Rome, Italy, 2011
• “Violet del Palmerino” Seminar, L’Associazione Culturale Il Palmerino, British Institute of Florence, the French Institute of Florence, and Villa il Palmerino, Florence, Italy, 2012
• “The Rose: A Hero’s Journey,” Women in Leadership: Unlocking the Power of Women to Change the World, Womanity Summit, Tempe, Arizona, 2013

Humanitarian Work and Related Awards

• Workshop Leader, The Daywalka Foundation, Kalam:MarginsWrite poetry workshops with adolescents rescued from human trafficking, Calcutta, India, 2006, 2007, 2009
• “Spirit of Mater” first annual alumna award, Sacred Heart Preparatory School, Atherton, California, (formerly Convent of the Sacred Heart) 2007
• Director, Outreach Project, MFA program, Arizona State University, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Phoenix, Arizona, 2008
• Mission Participant, Women for World Health, Cuenca Military Hospital, service award from Rotary International, Cuenca, Ecuador, 2008
• Workshop Leader, STOP, poetry and art workshop with adolescents rescued from human trafficking, Delhi, India, 2009
• Advisory Board Member, The Afghan Women’s Writing Project, 2010–present
• Founder, The Ashton Goodman Fund, The Afghan Women’s Writing Project, 2010
• “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
• Director, “Out of Silence,” staged reading of Afghan women’s writing by ASU MFA students, Project Humanities, Tempe, Arizona, May 2011
• Faculty Achievement Award for Defining Edge Research in Performance and Art Works, Arizona State University, 2011
• Founders' Day Faculty Teaching Award, Arizona State University, 2012

References

External links

• Video from 2013 Womanity Summit Keynote, Tempe, Arizona
• Author's website
• “The Mystery from which Everything Arises: An Interview with Melissa Pritchard,” The Southeast Review 29:1 (2 July 2011), Marian Crotty
• "Afghan women’s voices brought ‘Out of Silence,’” Arizona State University News (11 April 2011), Judith Smith
• "Meeting Ashton--A Symphony Worth Sharing," Air Force Print News Today (14 December 2010), by Laura McGowan
• "A Web Exclusive Interview with Melissa Pritchard", Image Journal (March 2009)
• "Mission trip illustrates power of women," Arizona State University News (11 December 2008), Judith Smith
• "Interview with Melissa Pritchard", Piper Bulletin (December 2008)
• “Bookworm,” nationally syndicated book review show, KCRW Radio, 89.9 FM, Los Angeles, CA (13 May 2004), Michael Silverblatt, reviewer/host