Colette Sartor grew up a nice, New Jersey Italian girl looking to escape the trajectory expected from nice, New Jersey Italian girls: marriage, three-kid minimum, Sunday mass followed by a sit-down dinner for the entire extended family that she alone would cook, serve, and clean up. After fleeing to Los Angeles to be an entertainment lawyer, she found herself disappointed by the Southern California beaches (not nearly as pretty as the Jersey shore) and by lawyering (which sucked), so she quit her job after a few years (okay, eight) and started writing fiction.

Colette’s linked short story collection Once Removed (University of Georgia Press) won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the IAN Best Book of the Year Award for Outstanding Short Story Collection, the NYC Big Book Award for Short Story Collections, the National Indie Excellence Award for Short Stories, and , the National Indie Excellence Juror’s Choice Award. In addition, it was first runner up for the Eric Hoffer Short Story/Anthology Award and a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award, the IAN Best Book of the Year Award for Outstanding Women’s Fiction, and the Balcones Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Fiction.

Her work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune,Kenyon Review Online, Slice Magazine, Carve Magazine, The Rumpus, Hello Giggles, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Among other places, her work has been anthologized in Short Stories from Printers Row, The Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, and Law and Disorder: Stories of Conflict and Crime. Her other awards include a Writers@Work Fiction Prize, a Fugue Prose Award, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, a Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, a Press 53 Open Award, and a Truman Capote fellowship from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she completed her MFA. She also is an alumna of the Community of Writers, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Ragdale Foundation Residency, the Wildacres Residency Program, and Tin House Summer Workshops.

Colette has taught writing for over 20 years and currently teaches at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program as well as privately. As a freelance editor, she has edited numerous fiction and nonfiction projects, including a creative writing textbook, and she served as senior fiction editor for the prize-winning Pif Magazine.

She also cohosts the Literary Roadhouse Bookclub podcast. In addition, she is the Executive Director of The CineStory Foundation, a nonprofit mentoring organization for emerging TV writers and screenwriters. She still lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and very large German Shepherd Dog who has yet to master the concept of boundaries, and she never wants to practice law again.

Short Bio

Colette Sartor’s linked short story collection ONCE REMOVED won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, among other awards. She has taught writing for over 20 years, currently at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program as well as privately, and is the Executive Director of The CineStory Foundation, a nonprofit mentoring organization for emerging TV writers and screenwriters.

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