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Madison Smartt Bell (born August 1, 1957) is an American novelist. Born and raised in Tennessee, Bell lived in New York and London before settling in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of Princeton University, where he won the Ward Mathis Prize and the Francis Leymoyne Page award, and Hollins University, where he won the Andrew James Purdy fiction award, he has taught in various creative writing programs, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. Bell is married to the poet Elizabeth Spires and is a professor at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland.

His eighth novel, All Souls' Rising, was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best book of the year dealing with matters of race. In addition he has written essays and reviews for Harper's, the New York Times Book Review, The Village Voice, and many other publications.

• The Washington Square Ensemble (novel) (Viking Press, 1983) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1984)
• Waiting For The End Of The World (novel) (Ticknor & Fields, 1985) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1986)
• Straight Cut (novel) (Ticknor & Fields, 1986) (Penguin mass-market paperback, 1987) (re-issued by Hard Case Crime in 2006)
• Zero db (short fiction) (Ticknor & Fields, 1987) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1988)
• The Year Of Silence (novel) (Ticknor & Fields, 1987) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1989)
• Soldier's Joy (novel) (Ticknor & Fields, 1989) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1990)
• Barking Man (short fiction) (Ticknor & Fields, 1990) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1991) (Quality Paperback Club, 1991)
• Doctor Sleep (novel) (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1992)
• Save Me, Joe Louis (novel) (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1994)
• All Souls' Rising (novel) (Pantheon, 1995) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1996)
• Ten Indians (novel) (Pantheon, 1996) (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series, 1997)
• Narrative Design: A Writer's Guide to Structure (textbook) (W.W. Norton, 1997)
• Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form (trade paperback edition) (Norton, 2000)
• Master of the Crossroads (novel, continuation of All Souls' Rising) (Pantheon, 2000)
• The Stone That the Builder Refused (novel, continuation of Master of the Crossroads) (Pantheon, released Nov 9, 2004)
• Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution (nonfiction) (Norton, released June 13, 2005)
• Freedom's Gate: A Brief Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture (forthcoming, Pantheon, 2007)