Antoine Wilson (born 1971) is a Canadian-American novelist and

short story writer A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

. He was born in

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, and later lived in

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Central California Central California is generally thought of as the middle third of the U.S. state of California, north of Southern California (which includes Los Angeles and San Diego) and south of Northern California (which includes San Francisco and San Jose, ...

, and

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

. He attended

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

and

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a graduate-level creative writing program. At 89 years, it is the oldest writing program offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in the United States. Its acceptance rate is between 2 ...

. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he is a contributing editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine '' A Public Space''.

Career

His debut novel ''The Interloper'', published by

Other Press Other Press is an independent publisher of literary fiction and non-fiction, based in New York City. Founded in 1998 to publish academic and psychoanalytic titles, Other Press has since expanded to publish novels, short stories, nonfiction, poet ...

in 2007, grapples with themes of family, crime, and revenge through the lens of an unreliable narrator. Wilson has said that the novel was partly inspired by the murder of his older brother when Wilson was seven years old. ''The Interloper'' was a finalist for the ''Foreword'' Book of the Year and was named a Book of the Decade by '' The L Magazine''. His second novel, ''Panorama City'', was published by

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company ( ; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, and reference works. The company is based in the Financial District, Boston, Boston Financial District. It was fo ...

in 2012. It spent seven weeks on the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' Bestseller list and was widely reviewed. In ''

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

'', Adam Ross noted a shift in Wilson's focus: "If ''The Interloper'' was about lighting the way to hell, to paraphrase Milton, here the author's gaze is directed heavenward, toward sanity and the good in all of us. ''Panorama City'' is about our struggle to remain open to one another in a world that categorizes and closes us off at every turn." In Germany, ''Panorama City'' was released as ''Ein Mann von Welt''. Wilson's third novel, ''Mouth to Mouth'', was published by Avid Reader (Simon & Schuster) in 2022. It follows the story of a man who saves the life of a stranger and the fateful entanglements that follow. President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

included the book on his 2022 Summer Reading List. It was also chosen as one of the best books of 2022 by ''

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'' and

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

. Wilson's short fiction has appeared in '' A Public Space'', ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...

'', ''

Storyquarterly ''StoryQuarterly'' is an American literary journal based at Rutgers University–Camden in Camden, New Jersey. It was founded in 1975 by Tom Bracken, F.R. Katz, Pamela Painter and Thalia Selz. Works originally published in ''StoryQuarterly'' ha ...

'', '' Quarterly West'', and the ''

'', as well as ''Best New American Voices 2001''. His stories have received Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XXX and XXXVII. In 2022, Wilson appeared on '' Storybound'' reading an excerpt from ''Mouth to Mouth''.

Awards

In 2001, he was awarded the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

Institute for Creative Writing. In 2005, he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction. ''Panorama City'' was named a Best Book of 2012 by The ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

'' and an editors' choice by ''The New York Times Book Review''. ''Panorama City'' was a finalist for the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Award in 2013. In 2017, ''Panorama City'' won the inaugural San Fernando Valley Award for Fiction from the Friends of the Library at

California State University, Northridge California State University, Northridge (CSUN or Cal State Northridge), is a public university in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. With a total enrollment of 36,848 students (as of Fall 2024), it has the ...

. ''Mouth to Mouth'' was a finalist for the 2022 California Independent Booksellers Alliance Golden Poppy Award and was longlisted for the 2022

Giller Prize The Giller Prize (known as the Scotiabank Giller Prize from 2005-2023) is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English (including translation) the previous year, after an annual juried co ...

."14 Canadian authors longlisted for $100K Scotiabank Giller Prize"

CBC Books CBC Arts () is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that creates and curates written articles, short documentaries, non-fiction series and interactive projects that represent the excellence of Canada's diverse artistic communitie ...

, September 6, 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Antoine Canadian expatriate writers in the United States American male novelists 1971 births Living people American male short story writers Canadian male novelists Canadian male short story writers 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century American male writers 21st-century Canadian novelists 21st-century Canadian short story writers 21st-century Canadian male writers