Bret Lott

Born: October 8, 1958 Residence: Charleston, South Carolina Nationality: American Alma Mater: University of Massachusetts Amherst Occupation: Author and Professor of Creative Writing Spouse: Melanie Lott

Bret Lott^[1] (born October 8, 1958)^[2] is the New York Times best-selling author of more than a dozen books including Jewel, an Oprah Book Club selection. From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at the College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. In 2007, he returned to the College of Charleston, where he currently teaches. He serves as nonfiction editor of Crazyhorse and leads a study abroad program every summer to Spoleto, Italy.

Bret was appointed to the National Council of the Arts^[3] by President George W. Bush and served a six-year term. He was a Fulbright Senior American Scholar in 2006 and writer-in-residence at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. He was invited by Laura Bush to speak at the White House as part of the White House Symposium on “Classic American Stories” in 2004.

Personal life

Born in Los Angeles, California in 1958, Bret grew up in Buena Park, California and Phoenix, Arizona, before returning to California to live in Huntington Beach. He met and married his wife of 30+ years, Melanie Swank Lott, at First Baptist Church of Huntington Beach/Fountain Valley. A graduate of Cal State Long Beach (1981), Bret and Melanie headed to Massachusetts for graduate school at UMass Amherst. He received his MFA in 1984 and landed his first teaching position at Ohio State University. In 1986 he started teaching at the College of Charleston in the English Department where he is now a tenured professor and director of the new MFA program.^[4] From 2004 to 2007, Bret served as Editor and Director of The Southern Review at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, but his heart was in teaching and he happily returned to the College of Charleston. Bret and Melanie have two grown sons, Zebulun (and his wife, Maggie, and their two children) and Jacob (and his wife, Sarah).

Awards and Distinctions

• Recipient of the Ohio Arts Council^[5] Aid to Artists Fellowship in Literature for 1986–1987
• Recipient of the South Carolina Arts Commission^[6] Fellowship in Literature for 1987–1988
• Winner, PEN/NEA Syndicated Fiction Project Award,^[7] 1985, 1991, 1993
• Bread Loaf Fellow in Fiction, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,^[8] 1991
• Distinguished Research Award, College of Charleston, 1995
• Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1999
• Chancellor’s Medal, University of Massachusetts, 2000
• In Praise of Teaching Award, College of Charleston, January 2002
• Recipient, The Avalon Award for Excellence in the Arts,^[9] Lipscomb University, October 10, 2005
• Recipient, The Leila Lenore Heasley Prize for a Distinguished Representative of American and International Letters, Lyon College, 21 March 2006
• Recipient, The Denise Levertov Award, Seattle Pacific University, 8 May 2007
• Recipient, Fulbright Senior Scholar appointment as writer-in-residence, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel, October 2006 through January 2007
• National Council on the Arts: Member, 2006--2012
• Appointed the Ferrol A. Sams, Jr., Distinguished Chair in English, Mercer University, 2012

Books

• The Man Who Owned Vermont. 1987. 
• A Stranger's House. 1988. 
• A Dream of Old Leaves. 1989. 
• Jewel. 1991. , an Oprah's Book Club selection made into a film Jewel (2001)
• Reed's Beach. 1991. 
• How to Get Home. 1996. 
• The Hunt Club. Villard. 1999. 
• Fathers, Sons and Brothers. 2000. 
• A Song I Knew by Heart. 2004. 
• Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life. 2005. 
• The Difference Between Women and Men: Stories. 2005. ^[10]
• Ancient Highway. 2008. ^[11]
• Dead Low Tide. 2012. 
• Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian. 2013. 

References