Andrea Barrett ’74, the author of six novels and three short story collections, is the winner of this year’s $30,000 Rea Award for the Short Story, which honors a writer who has made a significant contribution to the discipline.
Barrett’s story collections include Ship Fever, winner of the 1996 National Book Award, Servants of the Map, a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and most recently Archangel, a finalist for the Story Prize. She was a 2001 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.
Barrett graduated from Union with a degree in biology and pursued zoology and medieval history before writing fiction in earnest. She currently teaches at Williams College in Massachusetts. She was a fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
The Rea award was established in 1986. Previous winners include Eudora Welty, John Updike and Alice Munro.