Her story, “Elvis Lives”, was awarded the 1991
Edgar Allan Poe Award of the
Mystery Writers of America for Best Mystery Short Story and has been widely anthologized. “Beauty” won the Best Short Story Award at the
Moondance International Film Festival in 2001. She has received an
NEA (1991), and an artist's fellowship from the
Florida Division of Cultural Affairs (2001–02). Her short stories have appeared in
Redbook, twice in ''
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Mondo Barbie'' (
St. Martin's),
Literature: Reading and Responding to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay (
HarperCollins),
Simply the Best Mysteries (
Carroll & Graf),
Irrepressible Appetites (Rock Press),
Marilyn: Shades of Blonde (Forge) and many other magazines and anthologies. Recent stories have appeared in
A Dixie Christmas (Algonquin Books, 2005),
Miami Noir (
Akashic Books, 2006),
One Year to a Writing Life (Marlowe & Company, 2007),
Delta Blues (Tyrus Books, 2010),
Fort Lauderdale Magazine (2014),
Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen (Gutter Books, 2014),
Fifteen Views of Miami (Burrow Press, 2014) and the ''Southern Women's Review'' (2015) She wrote the libretto for the children's opera
Cricketina. She has co-edited a collection of
James M. Cain's nonfiction and
Birth: A Literary Companion, an anthology of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction about becoming a parent. She founded
Gulf Stream Magazine and went on to edit it from 1989–2002. Her essay "What Editors Want", published by
The Review Review, earned coverage in the
L.A. Times Book Blog "Jacket Copy" and the ''New Yorker's
"The Book Bench" blog. It was republished in Glimmer Train'''s "Bulletin". Barrett's third book
Magpies won the 2011
Florida Book Award Gold Medal for general fiction. Barrett is founder and editor of
The Florida Book Review and Professor of English at
Florida International University where she teaches in the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing. == Works ==