Awards

2013
F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature.

2009
Doctor of Letters, honorary doctorate degree from The State University of New York.

2005
National Magazine Award for Fiction.

2004
Paul Bowles Award for Fiction from Five Points.

2004
Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing from The Prairie Schooner.

2001
National Magazine Award for Fiction.

1997
Author of the Year Award from the Illinois Association of Teachers of English.

1997
The William Peden Prize for the best work of fiction to appear in The Missouri Review in 1996.

1996
The Lotos Club Award of Merit. (Previously given to Mark Twain, Fiorello Laguardia, et.al.)

1994
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

1993
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

1993
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

1993
The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

1993
Finalist nominee for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

1993
Citation for Notable Book for 1993 by the Notable Books Council of the American Library Association for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

1993
McNeese State University Distinguished Teacher Award.

1992
The Southern Review/LSU Prize for Short Fiction, given for the best first collection of short fiction by an American writer, for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

1991
Emily Clark Balch Award for the best work of fiction to appear in The Virginia Quarterly Review in 1990.

1987
Charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for "outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran."