Selena Anderson
San Jose, CA, USA | Writer
Austin and got her M.F.A. at Columbia, where she said “the best lesson … was to read with purpose.” She received her Ph.D. from the University of Houston. Tenderoni, Anderson’s recent collection of short stories melds fantasy and realism. The Rona Jaffe Foundation described it as examining “the boundaries of realism and fantasy … and interrogates the ideas of race, identity, and Black womanhood in the American South.” She is also finishing two other novels, Quinella and Cenisa, Samira, Monet. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Glimmer Train (see Amazon link below), Kenyon Review, Joyland, AGNI, The Best of Gigantic Anthology, Oxford American, The Georgia Review, Bomb, Callaloo, and Fence, among others. In addition to 360 Xochi Quetzal, Anderson has also attended residencies at the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, the MacDowell Colony, the Carson McCullers Center and the Kimbilio Center. Selena is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at San José State University in California and Director of their Center for Literary Arts.
Selena Anderson wins Rona Jaffe Foundation Award
We are proud to announce that one of our 360 Xochi Quetzal Resident Writers, Selena Anderson, is one of the six winners of the prestigious Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. This prize is granted to writers who demonstrate great talent and promise and comes with a $40,000 award.
Anderson says that when she got the call about winning the prize, she tried to sound cool but was silently jumping up and down. Her nominator writes, “Selena articulates, through brilliant prose, the fears and thoughts that preoccupy modern society. I have been consistently struck by the ways in which she balances the confidence of a mature writer with the vulnerability that characterizes the most impactful work. There is, at once, an emotional honesty and physical reality to her writing that has captivated me from story to story.” She also won the Transatlantic/Henfield Prize in fiction writing.
Selena is finishing a novel about three best friends who write letters to men in prison and working on a new project about the Texas-to-Mexico underground railroad. Anderson says that she will use some of the prize money to fund childcare so that she can finish some of her work-in-progress. https://www.ronajaffefoundation.org/2019/Winner/Selena-Anderson
Read More
“Tenderoni” by Selena Anderson, The Baffler
