Pulitzer Prize finalist to hold Mitte Chair at Texas State

Hannah's 1996 short story collection High Lonesome was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has also been a finalist for the National Book Award and has won the William Faulkner Prize for Best Work of Fiction, the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award and the Award For Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters.

Most recently, Hannah has served as Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi and also taught at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.

He began his collegiate teaching career at Clemson University in 1967, and remained there until 1973. During that time, he earned several awards, including the Bellaman Foundation Award in Fiction and the Bread Loaf Fellowship for Writing.

His first novel, Geronimo, won the Faulkner Prize and earned a monination for the National Book Award. Following a one-year position as writer-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, he began a five-year position at the University of Alabama, teaching literature and creative writing. During that time, he published Airships, a collection of short fiction that won the Gingrich Award.

Five Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Endowed Chairs were established at Texas State in 1997 through a $5 million gift from the Mitte Foundation. Chairs were established in cancer research, creative writing, entrepreneurship studies, school improvement and semiconductor manufacturing and research.