Jamel Brinkley is an American writer. His debut story collection, ''A Lucky Man'' (2018), was the winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It was also a finalist for the

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

The Story Prize The Story Prize is an annual book award established in 2004 that honors the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction with a $20,000 cash award. Each of two runners-up receives $5,000. Eligible books must be written in English and first p ...

, the

John Leonard Award The John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, established in 2013, is an annual literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) for authors' first books in any genre. Unlike other NBCC awards, recipients are selected by members, n ...

, the

Hurston/Wright Legacy Award The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards program honors Black writers in the United States and around the globe for literary achievement. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organizatio ...

, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He currently teaches fiction at the

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative W ...

Life & writing

Jamel Brinkley was raised in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

and the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. He graduated from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and the

, where he teaches. His first book, ''A Lucky Man'', is set in New York City and explores themes of family relationships, love, loss, complex identity, and masculinity. NPR said of the collection, " tmay include only nine stories, but in each of them, Brinkley gives us an entire world." Brinkley is an alumnus of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and he was also a Kimbilio Fellow in Fiction. He graduated with an MFA in creative writing from the

. He was the 2016-2017 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a 2018-2020 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University.

Awards

* Winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award (2019) * Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence (2019) * Finalist for the

(2018) * Finalist for

(2018) * Finalist for the

(2018)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brinkley, Jamel Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American writers PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners Writers from Brooklyn Writers from the Bronx Writers from California Columbia College (New York) alumni Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni