Lori OstlundLori Ostlund

Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction

Media Kit

Official Bio

Lori Ostlund’s first collection of stories, The Bigness of the World (University of Georgia Press, October 2009), received the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the California Book Award for First Fiction, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and was a Lambda finalist.  The Story Prize named it a 2009 Notable Book, and the collection was included on the long list for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the short list for the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.  Her stories have appeared in such journals as New England Review, the Georgia Review, Hobart, Prairie Schooner, and the Kenyon Review. In addition, three stories from the collection have been singled out for awards: “Idyllic Little Bali” received the $1,000 Lawrence Foundation Award for best story published by Prairie Schooner in 2009; “All Boy” was chosen by Richard Russo for inclusion in the 2010 Best American Short Stories"; and "Bed Death" appeared in the 2011 PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.

In September 2009, she was one of six emerging women writers honored nationally with a $25,000 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She received a 2010 fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She lives with her partner, the novelist Anne Raeff, in San Francisco, though she is currently spending two years in North Carolina as the Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC-Chapel Hill, during which time she hopes to complete her first novel, tentatively entitled After the Parade, and a second story collection.

In October 2010, UGA Press released The Bigness of the World in paperback.  She is represented by Terra Chalberg of Chalberg & Sussman Literary Agency.

Bookcover and Hi-Res Author Photos

The Bigness of the World book jacket (PDF, 224K).

Photo of Lori Ostlund (JPG, 820K)

Alternate Photo of Lori Ostlund (JPG, 424K)