Alice McDermott
Birth dateJune 27, 1953 (age 73)
Birth placeBrooklyn, New York, U.S.
OccupationNovelist, essayist
EducationState University of New York, Oswego (BA)
University of New Hampshire (MA)
GenreLiterary fiction
Websitewww.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

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. 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

Literary awards

YearTitleAwardCategoryResultRef.
1987That NightLos Angeles Times Book PrizeFiction
National Book AwardFiction[4]
1988PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction—
Pulitzer PrizeFiction[5]
1992At Weddings and WakesPulitzer PrizeFiction[5]
1998Charming BillyNational Book AwardFiction[6]
1999American Book Award—
2000International Dublin Literary Award—
Women's Prize for Fiction—[7]
2002Child of My Heart: A NovelInternational Dublin Literary Award—
2006After ThisPulitzer PrizeFiction
2007Audie AwardLiterary/Classics
2013SomeoneNational Book AwardFiction
National Book Critics Circle AwardFiction[8]
2014Dayton Literary Peace Prize—
2015International Dublin Literary Award—[9]
2017The Ninth HourKirkus PrizeFiction[10]
National Book Critics Circle AwardFiction[11]
2018Andrew Carnegie Medals for ExcellenceFiction[12]
Prix Femina étranger—[13]
2019International Dublin Literary Award—[14]
2024AbsolutionMark Twain American Voice in Literature Award—
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction—[15]

Honors

  • 1987 – Whiting Award
  • 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

Selected works

Novels

Essays

References

  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. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
  3. ^ "The lunatic in the pew - BCM - Summer 2003". bcm.bc.edu. Archived 2006-07-07 at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ^ "National Book Awards 1987". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2025-01-12.
  5. ^ "Fiction". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2025-01-12.
  6. ^ "National Book Awards – 1998". Retrieved 2012-03-27.
  7. ^ "Charming Billy". Women's Prize. Retrieved 2025-01-12.
  8. ^ "2013". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 2022-01-25.
  9. ^ "2015 - Harvest". Dublin Literary Award. Retrieved 2025-01-12.
  10. ^ "2017 Kirkus Prize". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  11. ^ "2017". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 2022-01-25.
  12. ^ "2018 Winners | Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence". www.ala.org. Retrieved 2025-01-12.
  13. ^ "Alice McDermott wins France's Prix Femina for best foreign novel of the year". The Writing Seminars. 2018-11-07. Retrieved 2025-01-12.
  14. ^ Glyer, Mike (2018-11-20). "2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award Longlist". File 770. Retrieved 2025-01-12.
  15. ^ "Announcing the Finalists for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction | The PEN/Faulkner Foundation". www.penfaulkner.org. Retrieved 2025-01-12.
  16. ^ 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.
  17. ^ McDermott, Alice. "Books". Alice McDermott. Archived 2021-07-09 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  18. ^ "What About the Baby?". Macmillan Publishers. Archived 2021-06-03 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2021-07-01.

Publisher profiles

Reviews