Wendy Rawlings

Wendy Rawlings

Professor

Education

  • PhD, Creative Writing, University of Utah, 2000
  • MFA, Creative Writing, Colorado State University, 1996

Research Areas

  • Creative Writing

Bio

Professor Wendy Rawlings grew up in New York and received her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Utah in 2000. She also completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Colorado State University in 1996. The recipient of residency fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo, Rawlings was awarded the John Farrar Fellowship in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Rawlings’ teaching interests include: form and theory of fiction, short fiction by women, narrative voice in the American short story, and the comic novel. A collection of her short stories, Come Back Irish, won the 2000 Sandstone Prize for Short Fiction and was published in December 2001 by Ohio State University Press. Her novel, The Agnostics, won the Michigan Literary Award from the University of Michigan Press.

Selected Publications

Books Authored

Selected Short Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction

  • “To the Breach.” storySouth. (Spring 2022).
  • “A Bad Sort of Industry.” Arts & Letters. (Spring 2019).
  • “Coffins For Kids!” The Kenyon Review. (Jan/Feb 2019).
  • “My Bully’s Mouth. Nelle. (Winter 2019).
  • “No One’s a Virgin.” Creative Nonfiction. (Summer 2018).
  • “Portrait of a Family, Crooked & Straight.” Waveform: Innovative Essays by Contemporary Women Writers. ed. Marcia Aldrich. University of Georgia Press.
  • “Portrait of a Family, Crooked & Straight. Colorado Review. (Summer 2016).
  • “BodSwap With Moses.” The Normal School. (Spring 2016).
  • “Studying Irish.” Meridian. (Winter 2016).
  • “Restraint.” The Cincinnati Review. (Winter 2016).
  • “A Singular Apparatus.” Florida Review. (Fall 2015).
  • “Strange & Enormous & Terrible & Absurd.” The Force of What’s Possible. Ed. Lily Hoang and Joshua Marie Wilkinson. Nightboat Books, 2015.
  • “To God Almighty That I Have Never Believed In, Especially Since This Entity Saw Fit To Take My Best Friend Rosemarie Who Had Just Finished Medical School at Johns Hopkins When She Was Killed in a Horrible Car Accident. A Book of Uncommon Prayer. Ed. Matthew Vollmer. Outpost19, 2015.
  • Food and Worker Safety Across the Globe: A Nervous and Incomplete Case Study.” Creative Nonfiction. (Spring 2014).
  • “36A.” Sweet: A Literary Confection. (Fall 2013)
  • “Utah’s Bright Dark Heart.” Crab Orchard Review. (Fall 2013).
  • “The Hiccup.” Passages North. (Spring 2013).
  • “Going to Port Chuck, or, Why I Hope My Soap Opera Outlives Me.” The Borderlands: Explorations at the Fringes of Creative Nonfiction. Ed. BJ Hollars. University of Nebraska Press. (Spring 2013).
  • Tics.” AGNI. (Fall 2012).
  • “Weight Watching.” The Cincinnati Review. (Fall 2012).
  • “Love in Wartime.” Crab Orchard Review. (Fall 2012).
  • “‘Scarce Half Made-Up’: Contemporary Memoir and its Discontents.” Fourth Genre. (Spring 2012).
  • America Loves Fat Men and Skinny Women.” Toad. (Spring 2012).
  • “The Yak Pants,” The Normal School. (Spring 2011).
  • Our Neighborhood.” Brevity 36. (Spring 2011).
  • “Fiasco,” One Word: Contemporary Writers on Words They Love or Loathe. Ed. Molly McQuade (Sarabande Books, Fall 2010).
  • “The Shift,” The Southern Review. (Summer 2009).
  • “The Fleischer/Giaccondo Online Gift Registry,” Sonora Review (Spring 2009).
  • “In the Wasp Kingdom,” The Normal School. (Spring 2009).
  • “The Skeleton,” The Massachusetts Review. (Winter 2007).
  • “Ye Olde 20th Century,” Indiana Review. ( Summer 2007.)
  • “Again,” The Cincinnati Review. (Winter 2007).
  • Spectacular Mistakes,” AGNI. (Fall, 2006).
  • “Berries on the Vine,” Tin House. ( Fall 2004).
  • “Outlandish Plot,” Sonora Review. (Fall 2004).
  • “Portrait of My Mother’s Head on a Plate.” Mid-American Review (2004).
  • “Ode to the Industrial Suburbs.” Colorado Review (Summer 2002).
  • Virtually Romance.” Fourth Genre 4:1 (2002).
  • “Batcatching.” The Bellingham Review (Fall 2000).
  • “I’m From Ballymullet.” The Atlantic Monthly (May 2000).
  • “Heteroworld.” Colorado Review (Winter 1999).
  • “Come Back Irish.” The Atlantic Monthly (September 1998).

Awards and Honors

  • “Coffins For Kids!” First Runner-Up, American Short Fiction Short Story Contest, 2017.
  • “Portrait of a Family, Crooked & Straight,” Notable Essay of 2017 in Best American Essays, ed. Leslie Jameson
  • “A Singular Apparatus,” Notable Essay of 2016 in Best American Essays, ed. Jonathan Franzen
  • Pushcart Prize for “Food and Worker Safety Across the Globe . . . ,” 2015
  • “Weight Watching,” Notable Essay of 2014 in Best American Essays, ed. John Jeremiah Sullivan
  • Faculty Member, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, 2014
  • “Tics,” Notable Short Story of 2013 in Best American Short Stories, ed. Elizabeth Strout
  • “Spectacular Mistakes,” Notable Essay of 2007 in Best American Essays, ed. David Foster Wallace
  • Winner, Michigan Literary Fiction Award for the Novel, 2007
  • Fellow, Wesleyan Writers’ Conference, 2006
  • John Farrar Fellow in Fiction, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, 2002
  • Winner, The Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction, 2000