"With students at all levels I make the same initial proposition: Write what you will; I’ll read it, and together we’ll make a plan to improve it…provided that a piece needs improvement."
Madison Smartt Bell
Professor of English; Co-Director, Kratz Center for Creative Writing
Madison Smartt Bell is a professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of 22 books, including three collections of short stories, two biographies, 15 novels, and the fiction writing textbook Narrative Design. His books have been prominently published in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Denmark, Holland, Brazil and Japan. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, among others. As an active literary journalist he contributes to The New York Times, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and The Boston Globe, among others. He has taught fiction writing at the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Writing Seminars of Johns Hopkins University, and at Goucher College since 1984.
Research, Scholarship, Creative Work in Progress
My novel Behind the Moon is forthcoming from City Lights in May 2017. My novel The Witch of Matongé is complete and in submission. I am working on a biography of the novelist Robert Stone under contract with Doubleday and editing a collection of Stone’s nonfiction under contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Publications
The Washington Square Ensemble (novel) Viking Press, 1983; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1984
Waiting For The End Of The World (novel) Ticknor & Fields, 1985; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1986
Straight Cut (novel) Ticknor & Fields, 1986; Penguin mass-market paperback, 1987; Hard Case Crime Series paper back, 2006
Zero db (short fiction) Ticknor & Fields, 1987; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1988
The Year Of Silence (novel) Ticknor & Fields, 1987; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1989
Soldier's Joy (novel) Ticknor & Fields, 1989; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1990
Barking Man (short fiction) Ticknor & Fields, 1990; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1991; Quality Paperback Club, 1991
Doctor Sleep (novel) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1992; Grove Press (paperback, 2003)
Save Me, Joe Louis (novel) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1994
All Souls' Rising (novel) Pantheon, 1995; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1996; Vintage Contemporaries, 2004
Ten Indians (novel) Pantheon, 1996; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1997
Narrative Design: A Writer's Guide to Structure (textbook), W.W. Norton, 1997.
Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form (trade paperback edition) Norton, 2000
Master of the Crossroads (novel), Pantheon, 2000; Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 2001; Vintage Contemporaries, 2004
Anything Goes (novel), Pantheon, June 2002
The Stone that the Builder Refused (novel), Pantheon, 2004; Vintage Contemporaries, 2006
Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of A New Science in an Age of Revolution (nonfiction/biography/ history of science), W.W. Norton, 2005
Toussaint Louverture: A Biography ,Pantheon Books, 2007; Vintage books 2008 (paperback edition)
Charm City: A Walk through Baltimore (nonfiction) Crown, 2007
New Stories from the South 2009: The Year’s Best (anthology edited by Madison Smartt Bell) Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009
Devil’s Dream (novel) Pantheon, 2009; Vintage Books 2010 (paperback edition)
The Color of Night (novel), Vintage Books 2011 (paperback original)
Zig-Zag Wanderer (short stories) Concord Free Press, 2014; Electronic edition, Open Road, September 2015
Exhibits or Performances
Art Show: Enso drawn by me were used as background art for a display of haiku by 48 Baltimore Writers on the Baltimore LED Bill (Penn North) in December 2014. Some images can be seen at: http://ledbaltimore.com/led-haiku-words-and-pictures-48-writers/
External Awards, Honors, Grants
The Lillian Smith Award, 1989
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1991
Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, 1991
George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Award, 1991-2
National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, 1992
National Book Award Finalist (for All Souls' Rising) 1995
PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist (for All Souls' Rising) 1996
Maryland Author Award (from the Maryland Library Ass. for All Souls' Rising), 1996
Annisfield-Wolf Award (for All Souls' Rising), 1996
Selected for Granta "Best American Novelists Under 40" issue, 1996
John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, 2001
Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2008
Fellow, Leon Levy Center for Biography (City University of New York) 2011-12
Paul Bowles Award for Fiction, Five Points magazine, 2015
Conference Papers & Panel Participation
“Writing for the Ear,” Writing Workshop at The Studios of Key West, Key West FL, March 12-21.
“Weaving History into Fiction,” Panel Discussion, Southern Lit Alliance, Chattanooga TN, April 16, 2015
“Dessalines Dismembered,” New York University, April 27, 2015
Tribute to Michel Rolph Trouillot, American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC, November 21, 2013
Haitian Studies Association, Montreal (October 21-25, 2015) presentation of Soul in a Bottle
SAMLA, Raleigh Durham, NC (November 12-15, 2015) Creative Plenary Speaker (with Wyn Cooper, events included Bell & Cooper musical performance).
“John Barth Loves Us” (panel) Johns Hopkins University (February 14, 2016)
Tribute to Robert Stone, PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Washington DC (May 2, 2016)
Invited Talks
Reynolds Price Visiting Writer, Duke University (March 3, 2016)
Residency, including fiction reading from Behind the Moon, and “Unconscious Mind” craft lecture, at Old Dominion University MFA Creative Writing Program, October 2-8 2013
Reading from Zig-Zag Wanderer, The Ivy Bookstore, Baltimore, MD, December 7, 2013
Residency and reading at Rollins College Writing Program, Florida, February 26-27, 2014
Reading from Zig-Zag Wanderer, Newtonville Books, Boston, MA, April 9, 2014
Presented PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winner, Washington DC, May 10, 2014
Academic or Professional Associations
Member, Associated Writing Programs
Fellowship of Southern Writers, 2003- present
Fellow, Society of American Historians, elected 2005
Contributing Editor, Bomb, 2010- present
PEN/Faulkner Board of Directors 2014- present
News
- June 14, 2018
Professor Madison Smartt Bell was included on CBS Baltimore’s list of five Baltimore authors to put on summer reading lists.