Frederick Barthelme life and biography

Fredrick Barthelme is an American author of short fiction and novels and has been the thirty-three year director of The Center For Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. He has also been the editor of the nationally recognized literary journal Mississippi Review.

Barthelme's works are known for their focus on the landscape of the New South. He has been labeled a minimalist alongside other writers like Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, and Mary Robison, and has also been branded with labels like "dirty realist" or "K-mart realist." He published his first short story in The New Yorker, and has claimed that a rotisserie chicken helped him understand that he needed to write about ordinary people. He has moved away from the postmodern stylings of his older brother, Donald Barthelme, though his brother's influence can be seen in his earliest works, Rangoon and War and War.

Barthelme also has been the thirty-three year editor of Mississippi Review, which published Larry Brown, Curtis Sittenfeld, Amy Hempel, and others early in their careers. Issues of Mississippi Review have been guest-edited by Rick Moody and Mary Robison among others.

Awards

1976-77 Eliot Coleman Award for prose from Johns Hopkins University for his short story, “Storyteller.”
1979, 1980 National Endowment for the Arts grant
2004 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction nomination for, Elroy Nights,

Author of books:

Rangoon (1970, short stories)
War & War (1971, novel)
Moon Deluxe (1983, short stories)
Second Marriage (1984, novel)
Tracer (1985, novel)
Chroma (1987, short stories)
Two Against One (1988, novel)
Natural Selection (1990, novel)
The Brothers (1993, novel)
Painted Desert (1995, novel)
Bob the Gambler (1997, novel)

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