Madison Smartt Bell

Madison Smartt Bell (born August 1, 1957 Nashville, Tennessee) is an American novelist. He is known for his trilogy of novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, published 1995–2004.

Early life and education

Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Madison Smartt Bell lived in New York, and London before settling in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where he won the Ward Mathis Prize and the Francis Leymoyne Page award, and Hollins University, where he won the Andrew James Purdy fiction award.^[1]

Career

Bell is a Professor of English at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, where he was Director of the Creative Writing Program from 1998 to 2004.^[2]

Bell has taught in various creative writing programs, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars.

In addition, he has written essays and reviews for Harper's,^[3] The New York Review of Books,^[4] the New York Times Book Review,^[5][6] The Village Voice.

His papers are held at Princeton.^[7]

Personal life

Bell is married to the poet Elizabeth Spires. They have a daughter, Celia Dovell Bell.^[8]

Awards

• All Souls' Rising, a novel about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award. It won the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best book of the year dealing with matters of race.
• He won a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.^[9]

Bibliography

• The Washington Square Ensemble (novel) (Viking Press, 1983) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1984)
• Waiting For The End Of The World (novel) (Ticknor & Fields, 1985) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1986)
• Straight Cut (novel) (Ticknor & Fields, 1986) (Penguin mass-market paperback, 1987) (re-issued by Hard Case Crime in 2006)
• Zero db (short fiction) (Ticknor & Fields, 1987) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1988)
• The Year Of Silence (novel) (Ticknor & Fields, 1987) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1989)
• Soldier's Joy (novel) (Ticknor & Fields, 1989) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1990)
• Barking Man (short fiction) (Ticknor & Fields, 1990) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1991) (Quality Paperback Club, 1991)
• Doctor Sleep (novel) (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1992)(adapted for film as "Close Your Eyes" (2002))
• Save Me, Joe Louis (novel) (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1994)
• All Souls' Rising (novel) (Pantheon, 1995) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1996)
• Ten Indians (novel) (Pantheon, 1996) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1997)
• Narrative Design: A Writer's Guide to Structure (textbook) (W.W. Norton, 1997)
• Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form (trade paperback edition) (Norton, 2000)
• Master of the Crossroads (novel, continuation of All Souls' Rising) (Pantheon, 2000)
• Anything Goes (Pantheon, 2002)
• The Stone That the Builder Refused (novel, continuation of Master of the Crossroads) (Pantheon, released Nov 9, 2004)
• Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution (nonfiction) (Norton, released June 13, 2005)
• Freedom's Gate: A Brief Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture (non-fiction) (Pantheon, 2007)
• Charm City (Crown: 2007)
• Devil's Dream (novel about Nathan Bedford Forrest and the American Civil War) (Pantheon, 2009)
• The Color of Night (Vintage, 2011)
• Zig Zag Wanderer (Concord Free Press, 2013)

References

External links

• KEVIN LANAHAN, "Bell's 'Stone' caps acclaimed Haiti trilogy", Times Union, November 14, 2004
• Interview: Madison Smartt Bell Interview, KeepWriting.org