UIUC Creative Writing

Audrey Petty was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Her fiction was first featured 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 essay, “Late-Night Chitlins With Momma,” was featured in Saveur magazine and also selected for inclusion in Best Food Writing 2006 and Cornbread Nation 4. Her examination of creative writing pedagogy is included in Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project, and she has written on HBO’s The Wire for ColorLines magazine. New nonfiction is forthcoming in The Southern Review.

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. She has also been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council and the Hewlett Foundation.