Dr. Amina Gautier is the author of four award-winning short story collections: At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy, the The Loss of All Lost Things, and The Best That You Can Do. At-Risk was awarded the Flannery O’Connor Award, The First Horizon Award, and the Eric Hoffer Legacy Fiction Award. Now We Will Be Happy was awarded the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the International Latino Book Award, the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Award, a USA Best Book Award, and a National Silver Medal IPPY Award and was named Finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize. The Loss of All Lost Things was awarded the Elixir Press Award in Fiction, the International Latino Book Award, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, three Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Awards, a Royal Palm Literary Award, a Silver IPPY Award, and was named Finalist for the John Gardner Award, the Paterson Prize, two IndieFab awards, and the Hurston/Wright Award, and has been shortlisted for the SFC Literary Prize. For her body of work, Gautier has been awarded the Blackwell Prize, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and the PEN/MALAMUD Award for Excellence in the Short Story.
One hundred and fifty of Gautier’s stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including AGNI, Blackbird, Boston Review, Callaloo, Glimmer Train, Gulf Coast, Hong Kong Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Latino Book Review, Los Angeles Review, Passages North, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Southern Review, StoryQuarterly, and TriQuarterly. For her individual short stories, Gautier has been the recipient of the Crazyhorse Prize, the Danahy Fiction Prize, the Jack Dyer Prize, the William Richey Prize, the Schlafly Microfiction Award, and the Lamar York Prize in Fiction. She has also received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her fiction has been supported with fellowships and scholarships from American Antiquarian Society, The Betsy Hotel, The Bogliasco Foundation, Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, Callaloo Writer’s Workshop, the Camargo Foundation, the Chateau de Lavigny, Dora Maar House, Disquiet International, Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers; Hurston/Wright Foundation Writer’s Workshop, Kimbilio, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Key West Literary Seminars, MacDowell Colony, Prairie Center of the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, Ucross Foundation, University of Miami Center for the Humanities, VCCA, Vermont Studio Center and Writers in the Heartland. A graduate of Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, Gautier has taught creative writing and African American literature at Marquette University, Saint Joseph’s University, Washington University in St. Louis, DePaul University, and University of Miami.
Gautier divides her time between Miami and Chicago.
Gautier is a writer, scholar, and professor. Her background as a scholar of 19th Century American literature and, more generally, African American literature combines with her training as a fiction writer such that she is both a critic and a creative writer, fully engaged in the analysis and creation of literature. Her critical work focuses on such nineteenth century American authors as Charles W. Chesnutt, Elleanor Eldridge, Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Walt Whitman. Gautier is a graduate of The Northfield Mount Hermon School (NMH), Stanford University, from which she earned both a bachelor and master's degree within four years, and the University of Pennsylvania where she received a master's degree and Ph.D. She has been a Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellow (now Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow) at Stanford University, a Fontaine Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, a Mitchem Dissertation Fellow at Marquette University, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, and a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellow. Her academic memberships include AWP, MLA, and MELUS.
Gautier was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and is of African-American and Puerto Rican heritage. Her professional memberships include NAACP, National Association of University Women (NAUW), National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), and National Urban League. Gautier is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.
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