October 2022: Beyond chuffed, as those across the pond say, to have a story in The Southern Review, a journal that I’ve admired my entire writing life. Thanks to the amazing staff: co-editors Jessica Faust and Sacha Idell, Zach Shultz, and Victoria Hermann.
January 2021: Crazyhorse published my first short story way back in the early aughts, so I’m thrilled to enter the twenty-twenties with an essay in their very fine pages with so many other wonderful authors. A million thanks to Bret Lott for the decades of support and encouragement, and to the talented staff for publishing in a ridiculously difficult year.
January 2019: Squirming with happiness to have flash nonfiction, “String, Too Short” out in Brevity and a short story, “The Moon, the Pyramids, the World” out in NELLE. My endless thanks to the Brevity and NELLE editors and staff for their hard work and for including me. Support your lit mags, folks!
May-June 2018. Excited and grateful to have received a residency at The Hambidge Center in rural north Georgia. I’ll be there for three weeks working on a new project. Many, many thanks to Hambidge for the opportunity for such quiet space and time to immerse.
2018: Grateful to the Alabama Library Association, which selected Sycamore for its 2018 Author Award in Fiction. Yay, librarians! Thank you!
2018: A million thanks to Pima County Public Library for selecting Sycamore as a Southwest Book of the Year for 2017!
2017: Thank you, Bustle, for including Sycamore in “The 17 Best Debut Novels by Women in 2017”!
2017: Amazon picks Sycamore as one of 100 books of 2017 at #74 (among 43 in literary fiction)! Honored (and stunned) to be included among all these writers.
2017: Hugely grateful and gobsmacked to have received a 2017-18 Artist Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the council and judges and to public arts funding here and everywhere.
2017: Shout-outs to Nevada Public Radio,Your magazine in Australia, and the New Jersey Star-Ledger for the Sycamore love—thank you!
2017″ Many thanks to the Philadelphia Inquirer for including Sycamore in its best-of-summer roundup.
2017: Amazon picks Sycamore for “Best Literature and Fiction of 2017 So Far.” Kinda surreal to be to be among these authors. A million thanks.
June 2017: O: The Oprah Magazine picks Sycamore as one of its “20 Books of Summer”! Thanks to infinity for including me.
2017: Sycamore is on the Indie Next List for June. I love you, Indies!
2017: Glamour has included Sycamore in its feature “New Books by Women You’re Guaranteed to Love This Summer.” and Bustle picked it as one of “The Best 15 Fiction Books of May.” Honored to be included among so many great titles.
2017: Sycamore will be published in translation in Germany with BTB Verlag, in Italy with Ponte Alle Grazie, and in the Czech Republic with Beta. Danke, Grazie, and Děkuji!
May 2017: Sycamore chosen for Amazon’s Best Books of the Month for May. Includes a lovely review. Hooray!
May 2017: Sycamore picked for the May 2017 LibraryReads, the top 10 books for the month chosen by librarians around the country. I wrote a little love letter of thanks.
2017: A bouquet of thanks to Library Journal for including Sycamore in “Great First Acts: Debut Novels“
2017: Reviews Roundup: Publishers Weekly and Library Journal give Sycamore a starred review, plus kind words in Booklist (American Library Association), the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Missourian, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Many thanks to these reviewers!
December 2016: Publishers Weekly selected Sycamore as part of its spring preview, in which PW “predict[s] which books will stand out in the early months of 2017… hundreds of adult titles that we expect good things from…” Sycamore is listed in the literary fiction category.
June 1, 2016: My debut novel, Sycamore, will be published by Harper (HarperCollins) in May 2017. You can read about it and see the gorgeous cover (and perhaps even preorder!) on the home page and around the web. I wrote a brief post, too.
April 18, 2015: I have accepted a new creative-writing teaching position at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I will begin teaching at UNC Charlotte in Fall 2015, and the amazing TW and I will be moving to Charlotte this summer. I’m so looking forward to working with new colleagues and students at UNCC while saying fond goodbyes to my friends and students at the University of Montevallo.
November 6, 2014: I found out my Jentel Artist Residency will be May 15-June 13, 2015. I’ve heard such lovely things about Jentel, and this will be my first-ever residency (aside, I mean, from my annual Summer Barricade in Home Office). This opportunity arrived through the wondrous Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award, for which I traveled to New York in October 2014. I wrote a blog post for P&W about the experience.
July 16, 2014: My story collection, When Are You Coming Home?, won the 2014 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and will be published by the University of Nebraska Press. In my giddiness, I wrote a post about it.
June 10, 2014: I received a 2014-15 Literary Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. From the judges: “Her work has been described as ‘deeply felt’ with beautiful imagery and offering a fresh voice that pulls readers immediately into the flow of the story.” More here.
April 23, 2014: I was selected as the winner in fiction for the 2014 Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award, along with Alabama poet Harry Moore. The details of the award, from P&W: “In October, Ms. Chancellor and Mr. Moore will travel to New York City, all expenses paid, to meet with editors, agents, publishers, and others in the literary community. In addition, Ms. Chancellor and Mr. Moore will receive a $500 honorarium; present a public reading in New York City, hosted by Poets & Writers; and are invited to participate in a one-month residency at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Wyoming.” More from P&W here and here, and I blogged about it here.
March 31, 2014: My short memoir, “Greetings from the Lighthouse Tour,” was a finalist in the Phoebe Nonfiction Contest judged by Cheryl Strayed.
December 13, 2013: My story collection, When Are You Coming Home?, was a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction through the University of North Texas Press.
Bryn Chancellor 