Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Florida State University professor Robert Olen Butler has won the 2005 National Magazine Award in Fiction for his short story "The One in White," published by The Atlantic Monthly.
This year’s top honor is the second National Magazine Award since 2001 and the third nomination for the coveted prize since 1996 for Butler, a Francis Eppes Professor in the FSU English department’s Creative Writing Program.
The winning story also appears in his 2004 book titled "Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards," based on Butler’s own collection of antique postcards dating from the turn of the 20th century.
"Robert Olen Butler once again demonstrates one of the reasons we are glad he’s here, with an artistry and compactness of expression that connects deeply with his readers," said FSU College of Arts and Sciences Dean Donald J. Foss. "All who get to interact with Bob among our students, colleagues and friends are also gladdened because of his personal warmth coupled with great intensity and integrity. I’m delighted that again his work has been recognized at the highest level."
The American Society of Magazine Editors bestows the award each year to recognize both excellence in magazine fiction writing and the quality of a publication’s literary selections. Each magazine — including The Atlantic Monthly and other celebrated publications such as The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine — nominates three stories, penned by some of the nation’s most acclaimed fiction writers.
Butler, who specializes in fiction and screenwriting, is author of 10 novels and three collections of stories. In addition to his 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" and his two National Magazine Awards, he’s garnered a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and the Richard
and Hilda Rosenthal Award from the American College of Arts and Letters. Butler’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Best American Short Stories, The Sewanee Review and other distinguished literary publications.
The FSU English department’s top-ranked Creative Writing Program is the only one with inclusions in every volume of Harcourt’s prestigious annual anthology, "Best New American Voices." It is home to Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners and the author of the world’s most adopted creative writing text. Learn more at www.english.fsu.edu.