Cornelia Nixon

Cornelia Nixon was born in Boston, Massachusetts, March 25, 1947. She attended the University of California, Irvine, where she earned a BA in English with a creative writing emphasis, having been influenced by the fiction of Albert Camus in high school and that of D. H. Lawrence in college.Clayton Childress, Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 24-25. She received an MFA from San Francisco State University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Nixon taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, from 1981 to 2000, and then joined the faculty at Mills College, Oakland, California. She retired from teaching in 2016.{{Cite web |url=http://www.mills.edu/academics/faculty/eng/cnixon/cnixon.php |title=Mills College - Cornelia Nixon |access-date=2010-01-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100330051235/http://www.mills.edu/academics/faculty/eng/cnixon/cnixon.php |archive-date=2010-03-30 |url-status=dead }}

Nixon wrote two unpublished novels before becoming assistant professor at Indiana University.Childress, 61. Her first published book was Lawrence's Leadership Politics and the Turn Against Women, a critical essay that examined what Nixon saw as the change in gender power dynamics between D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow and Women in Love, a supposed sequel The Rainbow.

In 1991, Nixon wrote Now You See It, a novel in stories. It was very favorably reviewed by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times, by Richard Locke in The Wall Street Journal, in The Chicago Tribune, and Entertainment Weekly. In 2000, Nixon's published Angels Go Naked, a collection of interrelated short stories that form a larger narrative. It was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review.{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/16/reviews/000416.16gologot.html | work=The New York Times | accessdate=April 30, 2010| title=The Odd Couple }}

Nixon's novel Jarrettsville was released October 1, 2009, and was reviewed (unfavorably) in The New York Times,{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/books/review/Goodheart-t.html | work=The New York Times | title=The War at Home | first=Adam | last=Goodheart | date=October 25, 2009 | accessdate=April 30, 2010}} as well as (favorably) in The Washington Post,{{cite news| url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303599.html | newspaper=The Washington Post | title=Book review: 'Jarrettsville' by Cornelia Nixon | first=Robert | last=Goolrick |authorlink = Robert Goolrick| date=October 24, 2009 | accessdate=April 30, 2010}} Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and San Francisco Magazine. It won the Michael Shaara Prize for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, awarded by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. In 2017 sociologist Clayton Childress published Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), which used Jarrettsville as its focus in tracing a novel from inspiration through publication and then reception by reviewers and readers.[https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11027.html Princeton University Press website.]

Nixon's fourth novel and fifth book, "The Use of Fame," was published by Counterpoint Press in May 2017. Nixon has also contributed to periodicals such as the New England Review, the Iowa Review and Ploughshares.{{Cite web|url=http://www.pshares.org/authors/author-detail.cfm?authorID=1119|title = Read by Author | Ploughshares}}

She was married to poet Dean Young from 1983 to 2010. In 2015, she married her former teacher and mentor at UC-Irvine, Hazard Adams.Childress, 228. Dean Young died in 2022, and Hazard Adams died in 2023.

• The 2024 Lascaux Review Prize for the Short Story, for "Lunch at the Blacksmith"
• The 2010 Michael Shaara Prize for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, awarded to her novel Jarrettsville{{cite web|url=http://www.gettysburg.edu/civilwar/prizes_andscholarships/michael_shaaraprize/|title=Michael Shaara Prize|publisher=Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College|accessdate=9 August 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110807200912/http://www.gettysburg.edu/civilwar/prizes_andscholarships/michael_shaaraprize/|archive-date=7 August 2011|url-status=dead}}
• First Prize O. Henry Award 1995
• O. Henry Award 1993
• Nelson Algren Award, Chicago Tribune (1988)
• Carl Sandburg Award in Fiction (1991)
• National Endowment for the Arts (1992)
• Pushcart Prizes in 1995 and 2003
• Carnegie Fellowship to the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute at Radcliffe 1986-87

• The Use of Fame, Counterpoint 2017
• {{cite book| title=Jarrettsville: A Novel| publisher=Counterpoint| year=2009| isbn=978-1-58243-512-1| url=https://archive.org/details/jarrettsvillenov00nixo}}
• Angels Go Naked*: A Novel, publisher Counterpoint, Paperback released November 2010
• {{cite book| url=https://archive.org/details/angelsgonaked00nixo| url-access=registration| title=Angels go naked| publisher=Counterpoint Press| year= 2000| isbn=978-1-58243-062-1 }}
• {{cite book| title=*Now you see it*: a novel| publisher=Harper Perennial| year= 1992| isbn= 978-0-06-097472-5 }}
• {{cite book| title=*Now You See It*| publisher=Little, Brown| year=1991| isbn=0-316-61170-0| url=https://archive.org/details/nowyouseeitnovel00nixo}}
• {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c33JW0QHEcMC| title=Lawrence's leadership politics and the turn against women| publisher=University of California Press| year= 1986| isbn= 978-0-520-05431-8 }}

• {{cite book| title=Pushcart prize XXVII: best of the small presses| editor=Bill Henderson| publisher=Pushcart Press| year=2003| isbn=978-1-888889-35-2| url-access=registration| url=https://archive.org/details/pushcartprizexxv00bill_2}}
• Prize Stories 1995: The O. Henry Awards, First Prize Winner. Ed. William Abrahams, Doubleday, 1995.
• Pushcart Prize XX: Best of the Small Presses (1995). Ed. Bill Henderson. Pushcart Press.
• {{cite book| title=Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards| editor=William Abrahams| publisher=Doubleday| year= 1993| isbn= 978-0-385-42531-5 }}
• Modern American Bestsellers, Moscow (in Russian), 2002.
• The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers. Ed. Vendela Vida. McSweeney's Press, 2007.

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• [http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=athe17405&srchtp=name&ca=1&c=1&AI=U14785324&NA=Cornelia+Nixon&ste=12&tbst=prp&tab=1&docNum=H1000142411&bConts=43 Cornelia Nixon at the Biography Resource Center]
• [http://www.pshares.org/Authors/authordetails.cfm?prmauthoriD=1119 Contributions by Cornelia Nixon at Ploughshares]
• [http://find.galegroup.com/gvrl/retrieve.do?contentSet=EBKS&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale(en%2C%2C)%3AFQE%3D(KE%2CNone%2C14)cornelia+nixon%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=Relevance&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T001&prodId=GVRL&searchId=R1¤tPosition=1&userGroupName=athe17405&docId=CX2654014350&docType=EBKS&contentSet=EBKS Cornelia Nixon at the Gale Virtual Reference Library]

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Category:Living people

Category:Indiana University faculty

Category:University of California, Irvine alumni

Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni

Category:San Francisco State University alumni

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:American women novelists

Category:O. Henry Award winners

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Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:Novelists from Indiana

Category:1947 births

Category:American women academics