Bryn Chancellor

Bryn Chancellor is the author of the novel Sycamore (Harper/HarperCollins 2017), which was a Southwest Book of the Year, an Indie Next and LibraryReads pick, an Amazon Editors’ Best Book of 2017, and among Bustle‘s Best Debuts of 2017. Her story collection When Are You Coming Home? (University of Nebraska Press 2015) won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Brevity, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, The Common, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere. A native of California raised in Arizona and transplanted to the South, she is a grateful recipient of fellowships from the Alabama, Arizona, and North Carolina arts councils and the Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. She makes her home in Charlotte, NC, with artist Timothy Winkler and is associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Education

• M.F.A., Creative Writing (Fiction), Vanderbilt University
• M.A., English Literature, Arizona State University
• B.A., English, Northern Arizona University

Research Interests

Fiction writing, creative nonfiction writing, contemporary American fiction and nonfiction, psychogeography/the writer as walker, comix/graphic narratives, race/gender/class/sexuality studies

Courses Taught

• ENGL 2128: Intro to Fiction Writing
• ENGL 3202: Intermediate Fiction Writing
• ENGL 4203/5203: Writing Fiction
• ENGL 4206: Writing Creative Nonfiction
• ENGL 4209: Fiction Writing Workshop: Flash Fiction
• ENGL 6073: Topics in Creative Writing

Publications

Books

Sycamore: A Novel (Harper/HarperCollins, 2017)

When Are You Coming Home? Stories (University of Nebraska Press, 2015)

Short Fiction

• “The Moon, the Pyramids, the World,” NELLE, winter 2019
• “This Is Not an Exit,” descant, 2014
• “When Are You Coming Home?” Blackbird 10.2 (2011).
• “All This History at Once.” PMS: poemmemoirstory 10 (2010): 113-117.
• “Wrestling Night.” The Yalobusha Review 13 (2008): 101-109.
• “The New Girl.” The Fourth River, 4 (2007): 50-58.
• “Meet Me Here.” Gulf Coast 18.1 (2006): 12-24.
• “At the Terminal.” Blackbird 3.2 (2004).
• “In My Former Life.” CutBank 62 (2004): 42-56.
• “Fossil Light.” Phoebe 33. 2 (2004): 98-115.
• “Any Sign of Light.” Colorado Review  31. 1 (2004): 34-44.
• “Start With the Walls.” The Cream City Review 27. 2 (2003): 31-42.
• “Water at Midnight.” Crazyhorse 62 (2002): 20-28.

Creative Nonfiction

• “Arterial,” Crazyhorse, Issue 98, Fall 2020
• “String, Too Short,” Brevity, 14 Jan. 2019
• “Missing Worlds”: personal essay at The Common 21 June 2017
• “How to Write Suspense”: craft essay for Publishers Weekly 5 May 2017

Current Projects

• Novel
• Linked short story collection

Selected Awards and Honors

Writing

• North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship
• Prairie Schooner Book Prize
• Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award
• Jentel Artist Residency
• Hambidge Center Residency
• Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship
• Arizona Commission on the Arts fellowship and project grant
• Sewanee Writers Conference Tennessee Williams Scholarship
• Bread Loaf Writers Conference David R. Sokolov Scholarship

Teaching

• Accessibility Excellence Award for Outstanding Faculty/Staff, UNC Charlotte, 2017
• Honors Faculty Award, University of Montevallo, 2015

Selected Readings, Panels, Appearances, + Talks

• Southern Festival of Books
• Gertrude & Harold Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series at Vanderbilt University
• Tucson Festival of Books and Masters Workshop
• Virginia Festival of the Book
• Alabama Book Festival
• Sensoria: A Celebration of the Literature and the Arts
• Hub City Writers Project/Spartanburg Public Library
• Hoover Public Library
• Prairie Schooner Book Prize Celebration Reading
• Winthrop University Visiting Readers Series
• University of North Carolina at Greensboro Visiting Writer’s Series
• Sewanee Young Writers Conference
• Poets & Writers WEX, McNally Jackson Books, New York City
• UAB Writers Series, University of Alabama-Birmingham
• Auburn Writers Conference Creative Reading Series
• Slash Pine Festival, University of Alabama
• Montevallo Literary Festival, University of Montevallo

Faculty Appointments

• Associate Professor, Department of English, UNC Charlotte, 2019-
• Assistant Professor, Department of English, UNC Charlotte, 2015-19
• Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Montevallo, 2009-2015 (awarded tenure and promotion in April 2015)