A professor in the MFA Writing Program has won an award from a top literary magazine.

Shenandoah, the Washington and Lee University Review, has given Michael Parker, a novelist and professor at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the Goodheart Prize for Fiction for his story “People Get Ready,” which appeared in Volume 54, Number One of the magazine.

Parker is a professor of fiction in the Department of English and author of the acclaimed novels “Virginia Lovers,” “Towns without Rivers” and “Hello Down There,” which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award. He is also the author of “The Geographical Cure,” a collection of stories and novellas that won the 1994 Sir Walter Raleigh Award. His fourth novel is forthcoming from Algonquin Press in September.

In addition to Shenandoah, his work has also appeared in Five Points and The Oxford American, as well as the Pushcart Prize, New Stories from the South and O. Henry Prize anthologies.

The Goodheart Prize is awarded to the author of the best story published in Shenandoah during a volume year.