Jewell Parker Rhodes is professor of Creative Writing and American Literature and former Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Her stories have been anthologized in Children of the Night: Best Short Stories by Black Writers, edited by Gloria Naylor (Little Brown, 1996), and Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas and Europe, edited by Charles Rowell (Westview Press/Harper Collins, 1995).

Jewell is a prolific writer and her short fiction has appeared in Callaloo, Calyx, The Seattle Review, Feminist Studies, Peregrine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Shooting Star Review among others. Her work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her scholarly and non-fiction articles appear in various academic journals, Ms. Magazine, and in many composition texts.

Among her numerous awards are the Yaddo Creative Writing Fellowship, the National Endowment of the Arts Award in Fiction, and two Distinguished Teaching Awards. She also was selected as the Creative Writing Delegate for the Modern Language Association.

Jewell received a Bachelor of Arts in Drama Criticism, a Master of Arts in English, and a Doctor of Arts in English (Creative Writing) from Carnegie-Mellon University. In 1995 she earned the Distinguished Teaching Award in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University.

She lives in Scottsdale, AZ.