Drue Heinz Literature Prize; Two National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship Awards; Fulbright Senior Scholar Research Grant to Barbados; Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Two Pennsylvania Council On the Arts Literature Fellowship Awards; Two Pennsylvania Council On the Arts Screenwriting Fellowship Awards; Two Pennsylvania Council On the Arts Playwriting Fellowship Awards; Indiana University of Pennsylvania Distinguished Alumni Award; Clarion University of Pennsylvania Distinguished Alumni Award; In A Town Called Mundomuerto named one of SfSite.com’s Ten Best Books of the Year; Heart So Hungry named a Toronto Globe & Mail Best Book of the Year; On Night’s Shore named to the New York Times Recommended Reading List; Three-time winner of the National Playwrights Showcase Award; Two-time winner of the Pittsburgh New Works Play Festival; Grand Prize winner of the Screenwriting Showcase Awards; An Occasional Hell named Finalist for the Hammett Prize and one of the five best books of the year by the International Association of Crime Writers; Pushcart Prize Nominee; Finalist for the Anything But Hollywood Screenwriting Award; Finalist for the New Century Writers Screenplay Award; Frankfurt E-Book Award nominee for Dead Man Falling; Finalist for the Beverly Hills Theater Guild/Julie Harris Playwright Award; Ruby Lloyd Apsey Playwriting Award from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; MacDowell Artists Colony Fellowship