Awards

• From Your Friend, Carey Dean: Letters from Nebraska's Death Row, First Place, Nebraska Book Awards 2023, Nonfiction (Fellowship Category). Nebraska Center for the Book. Lincoln, Nebraska. 

• From Your Friend, Carey Dean: Letters from Nebraska's Death Row. First Place, Nebraska Book Awards, Nonfiction (Fellowship Category), 2023.

• The Nature of Home shortlisted for 2021 One Book One Nebraska, Nebraska Center for the Book .  

• “Death Watch.” First prize in the 2020 Curt Johnson Prose Awards Contest, december magazine  

• Finalist, “From Your Friend, Carey Dean: Letters from Nebraska’s Death Row” River Teeth 2020 Book Prize (one winner, five finalists).  

• Finalist, “From Your Friend, Carey Dean,” 2018 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, Missouri Review.    

• “Leaving the Body.” First Prize, 2018 “Leaving” writing contest, Hospital Drive (University Virginia School of Medicine).   

• Bread: A Memoir of Hunger. Winner of a 2018 CHOICE award (Journal of the American Library Association).  

• Bread: A Memoir of Hunger. First Place, Nebraska Book Awards 2017, Nonfiction Essay category. Nebraska Center for the Book.

• Three-week residency, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska, January 2015.  

• Distinguished Artist Fellowships Nebraska Arts Council, $2,500 award in 2015 and $2,000 in 2001.  

• What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and the Platte, First Place, Nebraska Book Awards 2013, Nonfiction Essay. Nebraska Center for the Book.  

• What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and the Platte, Tied for Second Place, ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) 2013 Environmental Creative Writing Book Award.  

Notable Essay citations in Best American Essays series -

“Still Life with Peaches.” Georgia Review (Spring 2014) 

 “No Other River.” Iowa Review (Fall 2009) 

“Nine-mile Prairie.” Michigan Quarterly Review (Summer 2007) 

“Household Words.” Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall 2001) 

“My Place of Many Times.” Connecticut Review (Fall 2000) 

“Summer Reading.” Missouri Review (Fall 1993) 

“Pheasant Country.” Northwest Review (Summer 1990)