UIUC Creative Writing

Audrey Petty was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Her fiction first debuted in an issue of Callaloo devoted to emerging Black women artists. Her stories have since appeared in such journals as Painted Bride Quarterly, African American Review, StoryQuarterly, Nimrod International Journal, The Louisville Review, and The Massachusetts Review. They have also been anthologized in Gumbo: An Anthology of African American Writing and Black Writing from Chicago: In the World, Not of It? Petty’s poetry has been published in Crab Orchard Review and Cimarron Review. Her essays have appeared in Saveur, ColorLines, The Southern Review, Oxford American, Cornbread Nation 4 and the Best Food Writing 2006 anthology. A new essay will soon be featured in Gravy.

Petty has been awarded a residency at the Hedgebrook Colony, the Richard Soref Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Tennessee Williams Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she’s also been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council and the Hewlett Foundation.

She is currently at work on an oral history of the Chicago Housing Authority’s high-rise housing projects.