• National Book Award (Finalist) for The Feast of Love, 2000
• The Award in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1997
• Ohio University Spring Literary Festival (Honoree), 1995
• The Cohen Award for the best essay published in Ploughshares, 1994
• The Daniel A. Pollack-Harvard Review award to Shadow Play, 1994
• The Gettysburg Review nonfiction prose award for "Fiction and the Inner Life of Objects," 1994
• Michigan Author of the Year Award, 1993
• Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation Fellowship, 1992—95
• Lawrence Foundation Award, 1991
• Arts Foundation of Michigan Award, 1991
• Guggenheim Fellowship, 1985—86
• Michigan Council for the Arts Grant, 1984
• National Endowment for the Arts Grant, 1983
• Lawrence Foundation Award, 1982

Novels

• First Light Viking, 1987, ISBN 9780670817016. An eminent astrophysicist and her brother, a small-town Buick salesman, discover how they grew so far apart and the bonds of love that still keep them together.
• . As his wife does gymnastics and magic tricks, his crazy mother invents her own vocabulary, and his aunt writes her own version of the Bible, Five Oaks Assistant City Manager Wyatt Palmer tries to live a normal life and nearly succeeds, but...
• , a sumptuously reimagined Midsummer Night's Dream, a story told through the eyes of several different people, comic, poignant, and sexy by turns. Nominated for the National Book Award. A motion-picture version of the book, starring Morgan Freeman, Fred Ward and Greg Kinnear and directed by Robert Benton, was released on September 27, 2007.
• . A teacher's marriage and identity are threatened by a dangerously obsessed teenage boy at his school.

Short story and essay collections

• Harmony of the World (1984). Winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award.
• Through The Safety Net (1985)
• Gryphon (1985)
• Believers, Pantheon Books, 1997, ISBN 9780679442677
• Burning Down The House: Essays on Fiction, Graywolf Press, 1997, ISBN 9781555972561

Non-fiction

• The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot (2007). Winner of the 2008 Minnesota Book Award for General Non-fiction.

Poetry collections

• Imaginary Paintings (1989)
• The South Dakota Guidebook (1974)
• Chameleon (1970)

Edited works

• Best New American Voices 2001 (2001)
• The Business of Memory (1999)

• Greasley, Philip A. (2001). Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume One: The Authors. Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 54. ISBN 0-253-33609-0.