Tom Noyes
Alumni author, Tom Noyes ’92, was on campus recently for a reading of his work “Safari Supper,” a short story forthcoming in the literary journal Image. Noyes is not new to telling stories; his writing career began in third grade with the production of his original play “The True Meaning of Christmas.”
Since then, Noyes has published two books of story collections with Dufour Editions: Behold Faith and Other Stories (2003), and Spooky Action at a Distance and Other Stories (2008). Behold Faith was short listed for Stanford Libraries’ William Saroyan Prize, and was praised by the New York Times Book Review for its “macabre wit and startling confessions of frailty and delusion.” His stories have also appeared in several literary journals, including American Literary Review, Ascent, Colorado Review, Elixir, Eureka, Laurel Review, Mid-American Review, Pleiades, and Third Coast.
When he is not working on a story, he is associate professor of English and creative writing at Penn State Erie, the Behrend College. He teaches in Behrend’s B.F.A. in Creative Writing degree program, and recently won the college’s 2010 Council of Fellows Excellence in Teaching Award. He also is consulting editor for Lake Effect, its literary journal.
Noyes credits his success in part to his alma mater. “I learned how to read at Houghton,” says Noyes. “Without that experience, I don't think I'd be a teacher or an editor or a writer.” He says he read “seriously and rigorously for the first time” as a student. “Not only for enjoyment or in order to do well on a test, but I started to understand what it meant to read as a writer,” says Noyes. “Under the influence of my literature and writing teachers, I began to read fiction and poetry like I'm sure auto mechanics study cars.”
His hard work has paid off—Noyes’ work has been named a finalist for the Breadloaf Prize, the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Grace Paley Prize and the Richard Sullivan Prize. In 2009, he received an Individual Artist’s grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
“Writing is not work to me,” says Noyes. “Writing is my vocation.”
