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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. 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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  • 2018 – The Ninth Hour – New York Time Best Seller: Winner of the Prix Femina étranger for La Neuvième Heure, translation of The Ninth Hour. Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Kirkus Prize for Fiction; Semi-Finalist the Carnegie Medal for Fiction. Best Books of the Year: Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Library Journal, NPR, Kirkus Review, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Barnes and Noble, New York Time Notable Book of the Year
  • 2023 – Absolution: New York Time Best Seller. Winner Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Shortlist: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Barnes and Noble Book of the Month Club Selection. Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, Real Simple and Vogue.

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.[6]

Essays

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References

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  1. ^ a b 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. ^ a b "National Book Awards 1998". National Book Foundation. (With essays by Alice Elliott Dark and Katie McDonough from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog). Retrieved 2024-11-22.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. ^ "The lunatic in the pew - BCM - Summer 2003". bcm.bc.edu. Archived from the original on 2006-07-07.
  4. ^ "National Book Awards – 1987". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
  5. ^ a b c "Fiction". Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
  6. ^ Patrick, Bethanne (2023-11-07). "'I look for the scary story': How Alice McDermott turned the Vietnam War novel inside out". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-03-08.
  7. ^ McDermott, Alice. "Books". Alice McDermott. Archived from the original on 2021-07-09. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  8. ^ "What About the Baby?". Macmillan Publishers. Archived from the original on 2021-06-03. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
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Publisher profiles

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Reviews

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