Gina Berriault (January 1, 1926 – July 15, 1999) was an American novelist and short story writer.

Biography

Berriault was born in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. Her father was a freelance writer and Berriault took her inspiration from him, using his stand-up typewriter to write her first stories while still in grammar school. Berriault had a prolific writing career, which included stories, novels and screenplays. Her writing tended to focus on life in and around San Francisco. She published four novels and three collections of short stories, including '' Women in Their Beds: New & Selected Stories'' (1996), which won the

PEN/Faulkner Award The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living Americans, Green Card holders or permanent residents. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of ...

, the

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Rea Award for the Short Story The Rea Award for the Short Story is an annual award given to a living United States, American or Canada, Canadian author chosen for unusually significant contributions to short story fiction. The Award The Rea Award is named after Michael M. Rea ...

, for outstanding achievement in that genre. Berriault taught writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop and San Francisco State University. She also received a grant from the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram-Merrill Fellowship, a Commonwealth Gold Medal for Literature, the Pushcart Prize and several O'Henry prizes. She adapted her short story " The Stone Boy" for a film of the same title, released in 1984. The same story had previously been adapted by another writer for a 1960 television presentation.

Death and legacy

Berriault died in 1999, at age 73, at Marin General Hospital in

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. The Gina Berriault Award, created by

Peter Orner Peter Orner is an American writer. He is the author of two novels, three short story collections and two books of essays. Orner holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and was formerly a professor of creativ ...

and Fourteen Hills Review at San Francisco State University in 2009, honors Berriault's legacy.

Bibliography

;Novels * ''The Descent'' (1960) * ''A Conference of Victims'' (1962) * ''The Son'' (1966) * ''The Lights of Earth'' (1984) ;Story collections * ''Short Story'' (1958; a

Scribner's Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City that has published several notable American authors, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjo ...

showcase volume for four then-new writers: Berriault, Richard Yates, Seymour Epstein and Bonnie Barnett). * ''The Mistress and Other Stories'' (1965) * ''The Infinite Passion of Expectation: Twenty-five Stories'' (1982) * '' Women in Their Beds: New & Selected Stories'' (1996)

References

External links

*
The Woman in the Rose-Colored Dress
a short story, ''

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'' (Fall 2005). {{DEFAULTSORT:Berriault, Gina 1926 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American novelists American women novelists American women short story writers American people of Russian-Jewish descent American writers of Russian descent Jewish American novelists Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni San Francisco State University faculty PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners Writers from Long Beach, California 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American Jews National Book Critics Circle Award winners