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