![Tony Ardizzone
[photo credit: Anna Ardizzone]](images/Ardizzone July 2010.jpg)
Tony Ardizzone was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago and is the author of
eight books of fiction, including the novel The Whale Chaser, which was published
in Fall 2010 by Academy Chicago Publishers, and the recently completed interconnected short
story collection The Calling of Saint Matthew, currently under consideration. He is
also the editor of the anthology The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University
Fiction Workshop, which Indiana University Press published in 2005, as well as the novel
In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, published by Picador USA/St. Martin's Press in 1999 and
released in paperback in 2000, and the interconnected collection Larabi's Ox: Stories of
Morocco, selected by finalists judge Gloria Naylor and published in 1992 by Milkweed Editions.
A paperback edition of his first book of short stories, The Evening News, was published in
Spring 2013 by the University of Georgia Press as part of the press's celebration of the 30th
anniversary of its Flannery O'Connor Award competition.
Ardizzone's creative writing has received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the
Chicago Foundation for Literature Award for Fiction sponsored by the Friends of Literature, the
Milkweed Editions National Fiction Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Virginia Prize for Fiction,
the Lawrence Foundation Award, the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize, the Prairie Schooner
Readers' Choice Award, the Black Warrior Review Literary Award in Fiction, the Cream
City Review Editors' Award in Nonfiction, as well as two individual artist fellowships in
fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts.
In Spring 2013 Ardizzone left his position at Indiana University and relocated to Portland, Oregon.
At Indiana, Ardizzone received the 2012 Trustees Award for Teaching, and in 2005 he was the recipient
of the Tracy M. Sonneborn Award, given annually to a faculty member for outstanding teaching and research.
In 2006 the university named him Chancellor's Professor of English, a title given to faculty members who
have achieved local, national and international distinction in teaching and research, and the interaction
between teaching and research. At Indiana he offered courses in creative writing and the craft of fiction,
ethnic American literature, 20th century American fiction, creative writing pedagogy, and literary
interpretation. He also served two terms as Director of the Creative Writing Program, as well as a pair
of terms on the Board of Directors of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Prior to going
to Indiana, he taught at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he founded its creative
writing program and served as its program director. He has also taught for several years in the
low-residency MFA Program at Vermont College in Montpelier.
This site is dedicated to information about and critical reviews of his creative work. The
site also contains a biography of the author, occasional interviews (conversations), and a page of links
of literary and cultural interest.
