Scott Dominic Carpenter
Ye Olde Bio
Maybe it was the early job at a uranium mine. Perhaps it’s his fascination with the Paris catacombs. For whatever reason, Scott Carpenter relishes telling stories from beneath life’s mundane surface. An emeritus professor of French literature and creative writing at Carleton College, Scott Dominic Carpenter’s books include the Midwest Bookstore Bestsellers Paris Lost & Found (2024; Foreword Indies Prize) and French Like Moi: A Midwesterner in Paris (2020, Next Generation Indie Book prize), a collection of short stories called This Jealous Earth (2012), and a novel, Theory of Remainders, which was a Kirkus Best Book of 2013 and is currently in development to become a major motion picture. He has picked up a few honors along with way (see below). Always nosing about for the unexpected, he splits his time between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Paris, France.
Although this website focuses on his creative writing, he has a boatload of academic publications dealing (mostly) with literature and literary theory. Gluttons for punishment can read more about that here).
Awards, honors, kudos, and medals of valor:
- Foreword Indies Prize (Humor), for Paris Lost and Found, 2024.
- Midland Authors Award, for Paris Lost and Found (honorable mention), 2025.
- Best Memoir of 2024, for Paris Lost and Found (Nerdection Editor’s Choice, 2024).
- Midwest Indies Bestseller, for Paris Lost and Found (Midwest Independent Booksellers Association).
- Paris-American Library Book Award, honorable mention (for French Like Moi, 2021).
- Midwest Independent Bookstore Bestseller (for French Like Moi, 2020).
- Independent Publisher’s (“IPPY”) Book Award, bronze (for French Like Moi, 2021).
- Next Generation Indie Book Award (for French Like Moi, 2021)
- Solas House Gold Award (for “Deaf in Venice,” 2021)
- Midwest Indies Bestseller, for French Like Moi (Midwest Independent Booksellers Association).
- Forward Indies Book Award Finalist (for French Like Moi, 2021)
- A “notable essay and literary nonfiction” selection in Best American Essays 2020 (for “Squirrel Pie and the Golden Derrière”)
- Mark Twain House Royal Nonesuch Prize (2nd place), 2018, for “Squirrel Pie and the Golden Derrière.”
- Mark Twain House Royal Nonesuch Prize (honorable mention), 2017, for “The Death Button.”
- Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, awarded for 2016.
- Kirkus Reviews “Best Books of 2013” for Theory of Remainders
- “Midwest Connections Pick” by Midwest Independent Booksellers Association, 2013, for Theory of Remainders