Cornelia Nixon

Cornelia Nixon was born in Boston, Massachusetts and spent many happy summers on the "Big Farm" described in her novel, JARRETTSVILLE. Despite the fact that it contains not one battle scene, JARRETTSVILLE was awarded the 2010 Michael Shaara Prize for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, given by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

Her book on D.H. Lawrence was her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, and since then she has written only fiction, including now four novels, NOW YOU SEE IT, ANGELS GO NAKED, JARRETTSVILLE, and the forthcoming THE USE OF FAME (Counterpoint, May 2017). Many of her short stories have been published in literary magazines and have won prizes, including a First Prize O. Henry Award, another O. Henry Award, two Pushcart Prizes, a Nelson Algren Award, and the Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction. She has received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Antiquarian Society. She lives in Berkeley, California and on an island in Puget Sound. She has recently retired from teaching in the MFA program at Mills College and is at work on a memoir.