Joanna Scott

Joanna Scott

  • Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English
  • Professor of English
  • Director, Literary Arts Programs

MA, Brown University

Office Location
404C Morey Hall

Research Overview

Character and the motion of thought; the effects of varied narrative form; contradictory perceptions of time and place; the idiosyncracies of voice; mystery and the impact of disclosure; beauty and ugliness; comedy, temptation, collapse, and recovery; the elusive potential of imagination—these are some of the subjects that Joanna Scott explores in her novels and stories. Modern and contemporary authors she has written about include Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf, W.G. Sebald, Maureen Howard, William Gass, and J.M. Coetzee.

Research Interests

  • Modern and contemporary fiction
  • the art of imaginative writing

Selected Publications

  • De Potter’s Grand Tour, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2014
  • Follow Me, a novel, Little, Brown 2009
  • Everybody Loves Somebody, a collection of stories, Back Bay Books 2006
  • Liberation, a novel, Little, Brown 2005 (new issue in paperback, Back Bay Books 2008)
  • Tourmaline, a novel, Back Bay Books 2003
  • Make Believe, a novel, Little, Brown 2000
  • Various Antidotes, a collection of stories, Picador USA, reprint, 2005
  • Arrogance, a novel, Picador USA, reprint, 2004
  • Fading, My Parmacheene Belle, Picador USA, reprint, 2003
  • The Closest Possible Union, a novel, Picador USA, reprint, 2003
  • The Manikin, a novel, Picador USA, reprint, 2002

Teaching

  • Courses in fiction writing, modern and contemporary literature

Honors

  • MacArthur Fellowship
  • Lannan Award
  • Guggenheim Fellowship
  • Ambassador Book Award from the English-Speaking Union
  • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Pen-Faulkner, and Los Angeles Book Award
  • The Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
  • Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, PEN
  • Honorary Doctor of Letters, Commencement speaker, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, May 2009