The Fred R. Brown Literary Award recognizes the accomplishments of talented fiction writers, usually emerging novelists. This award was made possible by Fred Brown (CAS ’71) and Melanie Brown (CGS ’86, KGSB ’90, KGSB ’93), who are life-long residents of Western Pennsylvania and alumni of the University of Pittsburgh. Between them they hold a Bachelor of Science, a Masters of Science, an MBA, and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Pitt. They have spent most of their professional careers at the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory located in South Park. During their very busy and accomplished professional and intellectual careers the Browns have had, as one of their primary personal interests, book collecting. They have a collection of over 3,000 books—over half of which are signed and which contain winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Pen/Faulkner Award. The Browns’ generous award allows us to bring notable writers to campus who read from their work and interact in a variety of ways with our graduate and undergraduate students.

Past Brown Award writers include:

2007-2008 Don Lee
2008-2009 Sabina Murray
2009-2010 Aleksandar Hemon
2010-2011 Michael Thomas
2011-2012 Wells Tower
2012-2013 Justin Torres
2013-2014 Charles Bock