About

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, acclaimed author Scott Dominic Carpenter relishes telling stories from beneath life’s mundane surface. A professor of French literature and creative writing at Carleton College, Scott Dominic Carpenter’s books include the 2021 Midwest Bookstore Bestseller French Like Moi: A Midwesterner in Paris, for which he was given a Next Generation Indie Book Award, and This Jealous Earth, a collection of short stories. In 2018, Carpenter won the Mark Twain House Royal Nonesuch Award, a national humor writing contest. His award-winning first novel, Theory of Remainders, a Kirkus Best Book of 2013, is currently under option by a major motion picture production company. Always searching for the next unexpected story, Scott Dominic Carpenter 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:

• 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)
• 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