Tara Ison
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Matsunaga-2018-retirement-social-9474_%2841245178864%29.jpg/220px-Matsunaga-2018-retirement-social-9474_%2841245178864%29.jpg)
Tara Ison is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is the author of three novels: Rockaway (Soft Skull Press, 2013), The List (Scribner, 2007), and A Child out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber, 1997), which was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.[1] A collection of essays, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned To Live, Love & Die at the Movies, was published by Soft Skull Press in January 2015, and was the winner of the 2015 PEN Southwest Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her short story collection, Ball, was published by Soft Skull Press in Fall 2015. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2020 in support of a short story collection tentatively titled "The Meat Bee," after her 2018 story published in Tin House.[2]
Work
Ison received her MFA in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College. She has taught creative writing and screenwriting at Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Goddard College, Antioch University Los Angeles, and UC Riverside Palm Desert's MFA in Creative Writing program. She is currently Professor of English at Arizona State University.[3]
Ison's short fiction, essays, poetry and book reviews have appeared in Tin House, Salon,[4] O, The Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature,[5] The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Nerve, Black Clock, TriQuarterly, The Santa Monica Review, PMS: poemmemoirstory, Publishers Weekly, The Week, The Mississippi Review, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous anthologies. She is also the co-writer, with Neil Landau, of the 1991 cult classic movie Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.[6]
Awards and honors
Ison is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships in 2020 and 2008, and a 2008 COLA Individual Artist Grant, as well as multiple Yaddo fellowships, a Rotary Foundation Scholarship for International Study, a Brandeis National Women's Committee Award, a Thurber House Fiction Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, the Simon Blattner Fellowship from Northwestern University, and a California Arts Council Artists' Fellowship Award.
Books
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Book_Cover_of_Reeling_Through_Life.jpg/200px-Book_Cover_of_Reeling_Through_Life.jpg)
- Ball: Stories
- Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies' Winner, 2015 PEN Southwest Award for Creative Nonfiction[7]
- A Child out of Alcatraz
- The List
- Rockaway
References
- ^ "Book Prizes – Los Angeles Times Festival of Books". Los Angeles Times. April 19, 2013. Retrieved August 28, 2013.
- ^ "ASU authors Tara Ison and Sarah Viren named NEA fellows". ASU News. Retrieved February 14, 2020.
- ^ "ASU Directory Profile: Tara Ison". Arizona State University. Retrieved February 14, 2020.
- ^ Ison, Tara. ""Too stupid to be c*nts": The new normal of toxic male entitlement on campus". Salon. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
- ^ Ison, Tara. ""Ball" by Tara Ison, Recommended by Rick Moody". Electric Literature. Electric Literature. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
- ^ Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead at IMDb
- ^ "Winners of the 2015 PEN Southwest Book Awards". PEN Texas. February 4, 2016. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
External links
- 20th-century American novelists
- 21st-century American novelists
- American women novelists
- American women short story writers
- Living people
- Bennington College alumni
- Washington University in St. Louis faculty
- Northwestern University faculty
- Ohio State University faculty
- Goddard College faculty
- Antioch University faculty
- University of California, Riverside faculty
- Arizona State University faculty
- American women essayists
- 20th-century American women writers
- 21st-century American women writers
- 20th-century American short story writers
- 21st-century American short story writers
- 20th-century American essayists
- 21st-century American essayists
- Novelists from Illinois
- Novelists from Ohio
- Novelists from Missouri
- Novelists from Arizona
- Novelists from Vermont