Janet Peery, 22nd ODU Literary Festival

Janet Peery\u27s stories have appeared in Best American Stories, Pushcart Prize Anthology, American Short Fiction, New Virginia Review, Southwest Review, Shenandoah and other magazines. Her first book, Alligator Dance, appeared in 1993; her novel, The River Beyond the World, published in 1996, was a National Book Award Finalist. She has received awards and grants form the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Whiting Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Dorothy Allison, in The New York Times Book Review, said, The people in Janet\u27s first collection of stories pull you in, startle you, stay with you long after you have finished the book . . . Peery teaches in the MFA program at Old Dominion University