Joanna Scott
Encyclopedia
Joanna Scott is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author and Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English at the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...

.

Scott has received critical acclaim for her novels. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

, she is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship
MacArthur Fellows Program
The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T...

, a Guggenheim fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction.

Her stories have been included in Best American Stories (1993) and The Pushcart Prize
Pushcart Prize
The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....

 (1993). In 1992 she won the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction
Aga Khan Prize for Fiction
The Aga Khan Prize for Fiction is awarded by the editors of The Paris Review for what they deem to be the best short story published in the magazine in a given year. No applications are accepted. The winner gets $1,000...

 from The Paris Review
Paris Review
The Paris Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton. Plimpton edited the Review from its founding until his death in 2003. In its first five years, The Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S...

 for her story "A Borderline Case." In 2006 she won the Ambassador Book Award
Ambassador Book Award
The Ambassador Book Award is awarded annually by the English Speaking Union. It recognizes important literary works that contribute to the understanding and interpretation of American life and culture. Winners of the award are considered literary ambassadors who provide, in the best contemporary...

 for her novel Liberation.

She is one of at least three authors who share the same name— the other two are a romance novelist and Joanna C. Scott, who has written both fiction and nonfiction books.

Biography

Scott grew up in Darien
Darien, Connecticut
Darien is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. A relatively small community on Connecticut's "Gold Coast", the population was 20,732 at the 2010 census. Darien was listed at #9 at CNN Money's list of "top-earning towns" in the United States as of 2011...

, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

, where she was a volunteer emergency medical technician (EMT) with Post 53, a scout explorer post that serves as the town's volunteer ambulance service. One of her earliest pieces of writing was a nonfiction account of an EMT who lit fires, then helped rescue the victims. She became involved in the literary magazine for Darien High School
Darien High School
Darien High School is the single public high school serving the town of Darien, Connecticut, in the United States.The Latin motto on the school seal means "The truth will set you free" or "The truth will make you free." The motto is shared by other institutions, including Johns Hopkins...

.

She received her bachelor's degree from Trinity College
Trinity College (Connecticut)
Trinity College is a private, liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut. Founded in 1823, it is the second-oldest college in the state of Connecticut after Yale University. The college enrolls 2,300 students and has been coeducational since 1969. Trinity offers 38 majors and 26 minors, and has...

 in Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...

 in 1983. Before graduating, she spent a year in an exchange program at Barnard College
Barnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...

 and helped edit its literary magazine. Before graduating college, she also worked as a copy editor for United Features Syndicate in New York and spent a year at the Elaine Johnson Literary Agency. There she was an assistant to Geri Thoma, who later became Scott's own agent.

Scott received her master's degree from Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

 in 1985 and taught creative writing there as well as at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...

 and Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. Since 1988 she has been in the English Department of the University of Rochester, where she has taught courses in creative writing, the contemporary novel, the writing of Charles Dickens and other subjects. She also sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions
Conjunctions
Conjunctions, is a biannual American literary journal based at Bard College. It was founded in 1981 and is currently edited by Bradford Morrow....

. In one of her graduate courses she's taught about the ways fiction corresponds to time. Translation for Scott is an issue of almost ultimate importance, as she herself has said and stated many times. Author and editor, Rebecca Housel
Rebecca Housel
Rebecca Housel is an author/editor listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers and sponsored member of the National Association of Science Writers by Prevention magazine's Rebecca Skloot and environmental writer, Sharon Levy. Housel is known for her prose in popular culture, philosophy,...

, credits Scott's literary guidance during Housel's years as a student at the University of Rochester as being influential to Housel's later writing career.

She is married to James Longenbach
James Longenbach
James Longenbach is an American critic and poet. His early critical work focused on modernist poetry , but he writes extensively about contemporary poetry, too, and has authored four books of poems: Threshold, Fleet River, Draft of a Letter, and The Iron Key...

, a poet, critic and fellow professor at the English Department. Like Scott, he is also a graduate of Trinity College (Class of 1981). They have two children.

For research, Scott has traveled as far as Austria and Alaska.

Books

  • Everybody Loves Somebody a collection of 10 stories; release date: December 11, 2006; ISBN 0-316-01345-5 (Paperback)
  • Liberation winner of the Ambassador Book Award for Fiction from the English-Speaking Union of the United States; ISBN 0-316-01053-7 (hardcover)
  • Tourmaline finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in the fiction category; ISBN 0-316-60848-3 (paperback)
  • The Manikin (1996), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1997; ISBN 0-312-42138-9 (paperback)
  • Various Antidotes (1994), a collection of short stories and another PEN/Faulkner Award nominee; ISBN 0-312-42387-X (paperback)
  • Arrogance (1990), which received the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award, the Lillian Fairchild Award, and a nomination for the PEN/Faulkner Award; ISBN 0-671-69547-9 (hardcover); ISBN 0-312-42388-8 (paperback)
  • Make Believe (2000); ISBN 0-316-77666-1 (paperback)
  • The Closest Possible Union (1988); ISBN 0-312-42136-2 (paperback)
  • Fading, My Parmacheene Belle (1987); ISBN 0-89919-451-6 (paperback)

External links

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