Rebecca Brown

Rebecca Brown (born 1956) is an American novelist, essayist, playwright, artist, and professor. and served as the creative director of literature at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington from 2005 to 2009. Brown's best-known work is her novel The Gifts of the Body, which won a Lambda Literary Award in 1994. Rebecca Brown is an Emeritus faculty member in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont and is also a multi-media artist whose work has been displayed in galleries such as the Frye Art Museum.

Early life Brown was born into a Navy family that moved often; she lived in California, Texas, Kansas, and Spain. She has a brother and sister. Her father, who left the family when Brown was a teenager, died from a heart attack shortly after her mother; his death inspired The End of Youth.

Career Brown's works include collections of essays and short stories, a fictionalized autobiography, a modern bestiary, a memoir in the guise of a medical dictionary, a libretto for a dance opera, a play, and various kinds of fantasy. Brown has "a uniquely recognizable voice, writing as she does in a stark style that combines the minimalism of Ernest Hemingway with some of the incantatory rhythms of Gertrude Stein." She shares some personal preferences with the latter. She has also written a play, The Toaster, which debuted at Seattle's New City Theater in 2005, and a dance opera called The Onion Twins for the BetterBiscuitDance Company. In 2001, the About Face Theater in Chicago adapted The Terrible Girls into a play. New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles adapted four different stories from The End of Youth to stage in 2003. She has been a practicing Roman Catholic since 2012.

Book Year Award name Award Body Result Reference The Gifts of the Body 1994 Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Foundation Winner Washington State Governor’s Award Governor of Washington and Washington State Library Winner Boston Book Review Award Boston Review Winner Excerpts From A Family Medical Dictionary 2003 Washington State Book Award Washington Center for the Book, Washington State Library, and the Seattle Public Library Winner The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary 1998 Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Foundation Nominee

Selected works