Amina Gautier

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NOW WE WILL BE HAPPY • AT-RISK • THE LOSS OF ALL LOST THINGS

THE BEST THAT YOU CAN DO

Amina Gautier, Ph.D. is a Professor of English at the University of Miami and the author of four award-winning short story collections: The Best That You Can Do, which won the inaugural Kimbilio-Soft Skull Publishing Prize, The Loss of All Lost Things, which won the Elixir Press Award in Fiction and received the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, The Phillis Wheatley Award, The International Latino Book Award, The National Indie Excellence Award, a Silver Medal “IPPY” Award in Northeast Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Paterson Prize, The John Gardner Award, The Hurston/Wright Award, and shortlisted for the William Saroyan Award, and The St. Francis College Literary Prize, Now We Will Be Happy, which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, the International Latino Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Legacy Award, the USA Best Book Award in African American Fiction, the International Book Award, a Silver IPPY Award in Multicultural Fiction, a Florida Authors and Publishers Association Award Gold Medal in Short Fiction, and was Long-listed for The Chautauqua Prize in Fiction, and At-Risk, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and received an Eric Hoffer Legacy Award and a First Horizon Award. For her body of work Gautier received the PEN/MALAMUD AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE SHORT STORY in 2018, becoming the first African American woman to win the prestigious award.

Gautier has published a record number of short stories. One hundred and forty-five of her short stories have been published and her fiction appears in African American Review, African Voices, AGNI, American Short Fiction, Antioch Review, Asterix, B&A: New Fiction, Blackbird, Boston Review, Cicada, Chattahoochee Review, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Cutthroat, Glimmer Train, Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, Hong Kong Review, Hyptertext, Iconoclast, Iowa Review, Joyland, Kahini Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Kweli, Latino Book Review, Los Angeles Review, Mississippi Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Nimrod, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Opium.com, Oxford American, Passages North, Pindeldyboz, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Quarter After Eight, Quarterly West, Raleigh Review, Red Rock Review, River Styx, Salt Hill, Shenandoah, Southeast Review, Southern Review, Southwest Review, Storyquarterly, Studio Magazine, Sycamore Review, The Literary Review, Timber Creek Review, Today’s Black Woman, Torch, TriQuarterly, Write City Magazine, and Yemassee among other places. Gautier’s work has been extensively reprinted, appearing in All About Skin! Women Writers of Color, Best African American Fiction 2009, Best African American Fiction 2010, Best Small Fictions, Borderlands & Crossroads: Writing the Motherland, Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up to No Good, The Danahy Fiction Prize: Ten Years Ten Stories 2007-2017, Discoveries: New Writing from The Iowa Review, Forward 21^st Century Flash Fiction Anthology, Home in Florida: LatinX Writers and The Literature of Uprootedness, The Line-Up: 20 Provocative Women Writers, Love in the Time of Time’s Up, New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2008, On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library, The Notre Dame Review: The First Ten Years, The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Contemporary Women Writers on Forerunners in Fiction, Voices, and Welcome to The Neighborhood.

Gautier has won numerous awards for her individual short stories, including the Able Muse Prize in Fiction, the Anton Chekhov Award for Very Short Fiction, the Craft Fiction Prize, the Crazyhorse Prize, the Danahy Fiction Prize, the Rick DeMarinis Prize, the Jack Dyer Prize, the New Millennium Writings Flash Fiction Prize, the Raleigh Review Flash Fiction Prize, the William Richey Prize, the River Styx Schlafly Microfiction Award, the Sycamore Review Black Trans Prose Award, and the Lamar York Prize in Fiction. She has also received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her fiction has been supported with fellowships and scholarships from American Antiquarian Society, The Besty Hotel, The Bogliasco Foundation, Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, Callaloo Writer’s Workshop, the Camargo Foundation, the Chateau de Lavigny, the Dora Maar House, Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers; Hurston/Wright Foundation Writer’s Workshop, Kimbilio, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Key West Literary Seminars, MacDowell Colony, Prairie Center of the Arts; the Ragdale Foundation, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center and Writers in the Heartland.

Gautier was a member of the enrichment program Prep for Prep (Contingent XI) which tested and then placed gifted children from New York’s inner city into independent day and boarding schools. Gautier is a graduate of The Nightingale-Bamford School and The Northfield Mt. Hermon School. She is a proud Stanford Cardinal. In 1999, she earned co-terminal BA and MA degrees (two degrees within four years) in English literature and creative writing from Stanford University; she had the honor and fortune to study under Stegner Fellows/Jones Lecturers Jason Brown, Lan Samantha Chang, Ray Isle, and Keith Scribner. After attending Stanford University, she earned a master’s degree and PhD in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, where she studied under Michael Awkward, Herman Beavers, and Nancy Bentley, renowned scholars of American literature. She has held a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, a dissertation fellowship at Marquette University, a two year postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis, a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship, a NeMLA Fellowship, three Provost’s Research Awards from the University of Miami, a University of Miami Arts and Humanities Fellowship, a University of Miami Center for the Humanities Fellowship, and is the University of Miami’s 2021-2024 Gabelli Senior Scholar. Gautier is the incoming AMUW Chair in Humanistic Studies at Marquette University for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Gautier was born and raised in Brooklyn NY. She is a native New Yorker who currently lives in Chicago and Miami. She is an active and financial member of Delta Sigma Theta.