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Alice McDermott

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Alice McDermott
Born (1953-06-27) June 27, 1953 (age 71)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
OccupationNovelist, essayist
EducationState University of New York, Oswego (BA)
University of New Hampshire (MA)
GenreLiterary fiction
Website
www.alice-mcdermott.com

Alice McDermott (born June 27, 1953) is an American writer and university professor. She is the author of nine novels and a collection of essays. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award[1] and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction[2] and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Absolution was awarded the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.

From 2002 to 2019, McDermott was the Johns Hopkins University's Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities.

Life

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McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York. She attended St. Boniface School in Elmont, New York, on Long Island (1967), Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead (1971), and the State University of New York at Oswego, receiving her BA in 1975, and received her MA from the University of New Hampshire in 1978.

McDermott (left) speaking in 2020

She is the recipient of several honorary degrees including Boston College, Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies, University of New Hampshire, SUNY Oswego, Mount St. Mary's University, La Salle University, Regis College, The College of the Holly Cross.

She has taught at UCSD and American University, has been a writer-in-residence at Lynchburg College and Hollins College in Virginia, and was lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire. In 2012 she was the D'Angelo Scholar-in-Residence, St. John's University. From 2002 to 2019, McDermott was the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. For two decades McDermott served on the faculty of Sewanee Writers Conference. Her short stories have appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Commonweal, The Sewanee Review, Ms., Redbook, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, and Seventeen. She has also published articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

McDermott lives outside Washington, D.C., with her husband, a neuroscientist, and three grown children. She is Catholic, though she once deemed herself "not a very good Catholic."[3]

Awards and honors

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Literary awards

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Year Title Award Category Result Ref.
1987 That Night Los Angeles Times Book Prize Fiction Finalist
National Book Award Fiction Finalist [4]
1988 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction — Finalist
Pulitzer Prize Fiction Finalist [5]
1992 At Weddings and Wakes Pulitzer Prize Fiction Finalist [5]
1998 Charming Billy National Book Award Fiction Won [6]
1999 American Book Award — Won
2000 International Dublin Literary Award — Finalist
Women's Prize for Fiction — Finalist [7]
2002 Child of My Heart: A Novel International Dublin Literary Award — Longlisted
2006 After This Pulitzer Prize Fiction Finalist
2007 Audie Award Literary/Classics Finalist
2013 Someone National Book Award Fiction Longlisted
National Book Critics Circle Award Fiction Finalist [8]
2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize — Finalist
2015 International Dublin Literary Award — Shortlisted [9]
2017 The Ninth Hour Kirkus Prize Fiction Finalist [10]
National Book Critics Circle Award Fiction Finalist [11]
2018 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Fiction Longlisted [12]
Prix Femina étranger — Won [13]
2019 International Dublin Literary Award — Longlisted [14]
2024 Absolution Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award — Won
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction — Finalist [15]

Honors

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  • 2004 – Gaudium Prize
  • 2008 – Corrington Award for Literature.
  • 2010 – Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence.
  • 2013 – Inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame.
  • 2015 – Mary McCarthy Award, Bard College
  • 2019 – Seamus Heaney Award for Literature, Glucksman Ireland House.
  • 2024 – Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
  • 2024 – Recipient of the Eugene O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award.

Bibliography

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Novels

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  • —— (1982). A Bigamist's Daughter. New York: Random House.
  • —— (1987). That Night. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9781429929745.
  • —— (1992). At Weddings and Wakes: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9781429929622.
  • —— (1998). Charming Billy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9781429929707.
  • —— (2002). Child of My Heart (paperback 1st ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9781408806678.
  • —— (2006). After This. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780440337300.
  • —— (2013). Someone. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374281090.
  • —— (2017). The Ninth Hour: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374280147.
  • —— (2023). Absolution: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374610487.[16]

Essays

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References

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  1. ^ American Booksellers Association (2013). "The American Book Awards / Before Columbus Foundation [1980–2012]". BookWeb. Archived from the original on March 13, 2013. Retrieved September 25, 2013. 1999 [...] Charming Billy, Alice McDermott
  2. ^ "National Book Awards 1998". National Book Foundation. (With essays by Alice Elliott Dark and Katie McDonough from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog). Retrieved November 22, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. ^ "The lunatic in the pew - BCM - Summer 2003". bcm.bc.edu. Archived from the original on July 7, 2006.
  4. ^ "National Book Awards 1987". National Book Foundation. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
  5. ^ a b "Fiction". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
  6. ^ "National Book Awards – 1998". Retrieved March 27, 2012.
  7. ^ "Charming Billy". Women's Prize. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
  8. ^ "2013". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
  9. ^ "2015 - Harvest". Dublin Literary Award. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
  10. ^ "2017 Kirkus Prize". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  11. ^ "2017". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
  12. ^ "2018 Winners | Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence". www.ala.org. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
  13. ^ "Alice McDermott wins France's Prix Femina for best foreign novel of the year". The Writing Seminars. November 7, 2018. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
  14. ^ Glyer, Mike (November 20, 2018). "2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award Longlist". File 770. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
  15. ^ "Announcing the Finalists for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction | The PEN/Faulkner Foundation". www.penfaulkner.org. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
  16. ^ Patrick, Bethanne (November 7, 2023). "'I look for the scary story': How Alice McDermott turned the Vietnam War novel inside out". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  17. ^ McDermott, Alice. "Books". Alice McDermott. Archived from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved July 1, 2021.
  18. ^ "What About the Baby?". Macmillan Publishers. Archived from the original on June 3, 2021. Retrieved July 1, 2021.
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Publisher profiles

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Reviews

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