Marc Anthony Richardson (born December 7, 1972) is an American novelist and artist. He won an

American Book Award The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "the ...

and a Creative Capital Award.

Life and work

Born in

Elkins Park, Pennsylvania Elkins Park is an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It is split between Cheltenham and Abington Townships in the northern suburbs outside of Philadelphia, which it borders along Cheltenham Avenue roughly from Cent ...

, Richardson was raised in the West Oak Lane section of

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

by his mother, Betty Jean Richardson, and his father, Malcolm Anthony Richardson. He is the youngest of their three sons. In 1991, he graduated from the

Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts The Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, commonly known as CAPA, is a magnet school in South Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the edge of the Christian Street Historic District. It is a part of the School Distri ...

(where he won awards for illustration), and went on to earn his BFA from Antioch College (where he studied with Martia Golden and was a finalist for the 1994 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers) and his MFA from

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

(where he studied with

Micheline Aharonian Marcom Micheline Aharonian Marcom (born 1968) is an American novelist. Life and work Micheline Aharonian Marcom was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1968 to an American father and an Armenian-Lebanese mother. She grew up in Los Angeles, but as a child ...

and was a nominee for Best New American Voice 2010). Prior to Mills, he worked as a direct-care counselor, a visual artist, and a nude model. He briefly studied drawing, painting, and printmaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on a partial scholarship, but returned to writing because of a lack of funding. ''Year of the Rat'', his debut novel, won the 2015 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. In 2017, it was awarded an

from the Before Columbus Foundation, founded by

Ishmael Reed Ishmael Scott Reed (born February 22, 1938) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is '' M ...

. On being included with other winners, Richardson wrote, “To win a writer’s award from award-winning writers is a chance to be in bed with as many human beings as humanly possible." The ceremony took place at the San Francisco Jazz Center, and was televised on

C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...

. ''Year of the Rat'', a Künstlerroman, draws heavily from his personal experiences, as well as from those of his family members, past and present, delving into philosophical rants, poetry, social satire, and ribald, phantasmagoric language. Over the course of a decade, many of the incidents written in the book were freshly experienced by the author, such as his father's death and the near-death accounts of his mother and himself. Initially, one reviewer wrote that "the book is certainly unique in voice and style, but it’s also frightening, ugly, dense, and borderline offensive...it will make all but the most experimental of readers throw it across a room." ''Messiahs,'' his second novel, fixes on an anonymous couple, an Asian-American woman and an African-American man. The man volunteered imprisonment on behalf of his wrongfully convicted nephew, yet―after over two years on death row―was “exonerated.” In this dystopian society, proxies are allowed on death row in place of their convicted kin, as acts of holy reform. The initiative is based on the Passion of Christ. ''Messiahs'' was nominated as a fiction finalist for the 2021 Big Other Book Award. Richardson was also a recipient of a

PEN America PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922 and headquartered in New York City, is a nonprofit organization that works to defend and celebrate free expression in the United States and worldwide through the advancement of litera ...

grant, a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright fellowship, an

Art Omi Art Omi, formerly Omi International Arts Center, is a non-profit international arts organization located in Columbia County, New York, Columbia County in Ghent, New York. The organization provides Artist-in-residence, residencies for writers, art ...

residency, a Vermont Studio Center residency, and was an Andrew W. Mellon Scholar-in-residence at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. His work has appeared in ''Conjunctions, Callaloo,'' ''Black Warrior Review,'' ''Western Humanities Review,'' and the Anthology, ''Who Will Speak for America?'' from Temple University Press. He taught at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and currently teaches at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. In 2021, he received a Sachs Program Grant for Arts Innovation and a Creative Capital Award for his novel-in-progress, ''The Serpent Will Eat Whatever is in the Belly of the Beast''. Concerning the Creative Capital Award, Richardson said: " tmeans so much, because there seems to be three types of thinkers in this world: those who think inside a cell, those who think ''outside'' the cell, and those who simply think freely. This award supports the artists who work with no limitations in mind, no allegiances―whose diverse experiences ''require'' divergent formats."

Honors and awards

2022 Andrew W. Mellon Scholar-in-Residence at Rhodes University

2021 Sachs Program Grant for Arts Innovation

2021 Creative Capital Award
* 2017 Before Columbus Foundation/American Book Award * 2015 Fiction Collective Two (FC2) Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize

Publications

* ''The Serpent Will Eat Whatever is in the Belly of the Beast'' (Deep Vellum/Dalkey Archive Press) Forthcoming * ''Messiahs'' (Fiction Collective Two/University of Alabama Press) 2021. ISBN 978-15736619 * ''Year of the Rat'' (Fiction Collective Two/University of Alabama Press) 2016.

References

External links

*
C-SPAN: American Book Awards 2017Entropy InterviewWXPN (88.5 FM) University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Scriptorium Reading, Sacramento, CA

Publishers Weekly reviewKirkus reviewCleaver Magazine review (noted in the National Book Critics Circle blog, Critical Mass)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Marc Anthony 1972 births Living people Artist authors Mills College alumni African-American novelists American male novelists Antioch College alumni American Book Award winners Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts alumni 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people African-American male writers