Amina Gautier

Amina Gautier
Amina Gautier

Amina Gautier is an American writer and academic. She is the author of three short story collections, many individual stories, as well as works of literary criticism. As of 2014, she lived in both Chicago and in Miami.

Early life and education

Gautier was born and raised in New York, USA. After participating in Prep for Prep, she attended the Nightingale Bamford School before graduating from Northfield Mount Hermon. She then went to Stanford, where she earned bachelor and master’s degrees in English Literature. She continued her education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English Literature.

She held a Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship at Stanford University, a Fontaine Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, a Mitchem Dissertation Fellowship at Marquette University, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis.

Career

Gautier is a scholar of 19th Century American literature. She has written criticism of nineteenth century American authors Charles W. Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Elleanor Eldridge, Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Walt Whitman. Her critical essays and reviews have appeared in African American Review, Belles Lettres, Daedalus, Journal of American History, Libraries and Culture, Nineteenth Century Contexts, and Whitman Noir. She has received fellowships from the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), the Social Science Research Council, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

Writer

Gautier has published more than eighty-five short stories. Her fiction has appeared in a wide variety of magazines and story collections, and some of her stories have been reprinted in anthologies.

Her collection of short stories, Now We Will Be Happy, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and her second collection, At-Risk, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Gautier has been the recipient of the Crazyhorse Prize, the Danahy Fiction Prize, the Jack Dyer Prize, the William Richey Prize, the Schlafly Microfiction Award, and the Lamar York Prize in Fiction. She has also received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and her fiction has been awarded fellowships and scholarships from American Antiquarian Society, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Callaloo Writer’s Workshop; Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers; Hurston/Wright Foundation Writer’s Workshop, Kimbilio, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Key West Literary Seminar; MacDowell Colony; Prairie Center of the Arts; Sewanee Writer’s Conference, Ucross Foundation; Vermont Studio Center and Writers in the Heartland.

In 2016, Gauthier published her third short story collection, The Loss of All Lost Things. The book has been extensively reviewed.

Professor

Professor Gautier has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Marquette University, Saint Joseph’s University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently, Gautier taught at DePaul University. In Fall 2014, she joined the faculty in the MFA program at the University of Miami.

Gautier is a member of AWP, Chicago Writer’s Association, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., Friends of American Writers Chicago, Modern Language Association, National Association of University Women (NAUW), National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), National Urban League, and Society of Midland Authors.