![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
seven books of fiction, most recently the novel The Whale Chaser, which was published
in fall 2010 by Academy Chicago Publishers. 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, published by Milkweed
Editions.
His 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 2005 Ardizzone was the recipient of the Tracy M. Sonneborn Award, given annually
by Indiana University, Bloomington, to a faculty member for outstanding teaching and research.
At Indiana University he offers courses in creative writing and the craft of fiction, ethnic
American literature, 20th century American fiction, creative writing pedagogy, and literary
interpretation. He has 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.
In 2006 Indiana 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. Prior to coming to Indiana, he taught for nine
years 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 M.F.A.
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, and a page of links of literary
and cultural interest.
