Andrew Porter, M.F.A.

Andrew Porter is the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Trinity, where he also teaches courses in Fiction Writing. He is the author of four books, including the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter (Vintage/Penguin Random House), which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the novel In Between Days (Knopf), which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, an IndieBound “Indie Next” selection, and the San Antonio Express News’s “Fictional Work of the Year,” the short story collection The Disappeared (Knopf), which was published in April 2023 and longlisted for The Story Prize, and the novel The Imagined Life, which is forthcoming from Knopf in 2025. Over 20 international editions of Porter’s books have been published in various countries, including translations in French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Bulgarian, and Korean and foreign editions in the UK and Australia.

In addition to winning the Flannery O’Connor Award, his collection The Theory of Light and Matter received Foreword Magazine’s “Book of the Year” Award for Short Fiction, was a finalist for The Steven Turner Award, The Paterson Prize, The WLT Book Award, and the George A and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Award at Brown University, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and was selected by both The Kansas City Star and The San Antonio Express-News as one of the “Best Books of the Year.”

The recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the James Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the W.K. Rose Foundation, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Porter’s short stories have appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, The Missouri Review, American Short Fiction, Narrative Magazine, Epoch, Story, The Colorado Review, Electric Literature, and Texas Monthly, among others. He has had his work read on NPR’s Selected Shorts and twice selected as one of the Distinguished Stories of the Year by Best American Short Stories. In addition to other recognitions, Porter has received an Artist Foundation of San Antonio Award, the Drake Emerging Writer Award, the Trinity University Early Career Faculty Award for Distinguished Teaching and Research, and the Trinity University Distinguished Achievement Award for Scholarship, Research or Creative Work.