David Means β84 received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short story writing earlier in June 2025. Means, who teaches at Vassar College and has published six collections of short stories, credits ΊΪΑΟΙη for being an important influence at an impressionable time in his life.
Means majored in English at ΊΪΑΟΙη and wrote a collection of poems for his senior Independent Study, advised by Michael Allen, then assistant professor of English. βHe went over each line of a poem and put me under great pressure to make it yield meaning,β Means recalled. βItβs similar to what I put my students through now at Vassar.β
Means, who grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, chose to attend ΊΪΑΟΙη mostly because of Jim Bean, a professor of French, cross-country coach, and mentor to generations. βHe was a very warm, supportive person and made everyone feel like part of the family,β Means said, βbut he was also a good coach. I ran up and down that hill by the golf course a million times.β
Means also met his wife, Geneve Patterson-Means, at ΊΪΑΟΙη, although she transferred before graduation. βLife wouldnβt be anything like it is now if it wasnβt for ΊΪΑΟΙη,β he said.
Following graduation, he enrolled at Columbia and got an MFA in creative writing, still concentrating on poetry, but he was also interested in narrative stories. When he went to work reading manuscripts at a publishing house in New York, he thought he could do as well or better than the authors in the slush pile. His first collection of stories was published in 1991, and his most recent collection, Two Nurses, Smoking, was published in 2022.
Means has also written one novel, Hystopia, published in 2016. He still prefers the short story genre, but he found that a novel offered βroom to make mistakes and clean things up.β And the reaction to its publication was a not entirely welcome surprise. βPeople read novels a lot more than short stories,β he said wryly. βIt was a humbling experience.β
Many noted novelists began their careers as poets, and Means said: βWriting poetry teaches you to look closely, to be persnickety about language, and to use the music of language.β But one form often bleeds into another, and he said his prose is often intensely poetic.
Thinking back to his Independent Study experience at ΊΪΑΟΙη, Means said, βI thought I was an accomplished poet by the time I was a senior. Itβs valuable to do something complete that you started from scratch.β
The PEN/Malamud Award, sponsored by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation since 1988, recognizes a career body of work rather than one book, and Means didnβt know he had been nominated until he got the call while he was on vacation. βWhen you look at the list of past winners, itβs an astonishing feeling to join them,β he said, βbut you also feel a kinship with writers of the past.β And, he hastens to add, βIβm not done. I have a lot of stories to keep writing.β
Photo: David Means β84, Photo by Beowulf Sheehan, provided by the subject.