Andrew J. Porter
Andrew J. Porter is an American short story writer.
Life
Porter was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Vassar College, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.Currently, Porter lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he is Professor of English at Trinity University and Director of the Creative Writing Program.
His debut short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, won the 2007 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was republished in 2010 by Vintage Books/Random House. He is also the author of the novel In Between Days, which was selected for the Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" series, the short story collection The Disappeared, which was published in 2023 and long listed for both The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize, and the novel The Imagined Life, which was published in 2025. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as The Best American Short Stories, One Story, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Epoch (magazine), Narrative Magazine, American Short Fiction, The Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, Colorado Review, Story (magazine), Electric Literature, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. He appeared on NPR's Selected Shorts. His short stories have been awarded a Pushcart Prize and numerous times selected as one of the Distinguished Stories of the Year by Best American Short Stories. Foreign editions and translations of The Theory of Light and Matter, In Between Days, and The Disappeared have been published in France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Korea, Bulgaria, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and The United Kingdom.
Awards
- Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize, longlist
- Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, longlist
- Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize, longlist
- The Story Prize, longlist
- Flannery O'Connor Award, winner
- William Saroyan International Prize for Writing at Stanford University, shortlist
- Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, finalist
- George A and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Award at Brown University, finalist
- Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award
- W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts from Vassar College
- James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener/Copernicus Society of America
- Emerging Writer Award from Drake University
- Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers SelectionSan Antonio Express News's Fictional Work of the Year, 2012
- Iowa Teaching/Writing Fellowship from the University of Iowa
- Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee' Writers' Conference
- Residency Fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation
- Pushcart Prize
- Best American Short Stories 2025
- The Patterson Prize
- Steven Turner Award
- Glenna Luschei Award
- Discoveries selection by The Los Angeles Times
- Indiebound Indie Next selection
- Artist Foundation of San Antonio Literary Arts Award