Photo: Maurice Rabb
Audrey Petty writes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Her stories have been published in such journals as African American Review, StoryQuarterly, Callaloo, and The Massachusetts Review. Her poetry has been featured in Crab Orchard Review and Cimarron Review, and her essays have appeared in Saveur, ColorLines, Poetry, The Southern Review, Oxford American, Cornbread Nation 4, Gravy, and the Best Food Writing anthology. She is the editor of High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (Voice of Witness/Haymarket Press) and co-editor of The Long Term (Haymarket Press).
Petty has been awarded a residency at the Hedgebrook Colony, the Richard Soref Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Tennessee Williams Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and she's been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Invisible Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Hewlett Foundation.
She has taught extensively in the fields of African American literature and creative writing. Formerly on faculty in the Creative Writing Programs at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Knox College, Petty has also been an instructor for Project FYSH (Foster Youth Seen and Heard), Education Justice Project, and the Continuing Studies Program at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has served as the Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at Northwestern University and the Tin House Writer-in-Residence at Portland State University. She currently directs the Sojourner Scholars Program at Illinois Humanities and is a member of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project.