Alice McDermott
{{short description|American writer, novelist, essayist (born 1953)}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2025}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2025}}{{Infobox writer
| image = Alice mcdermottP5188188.jpg
| name = Alice McDermott
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1953|06|27|mf=y}}
| birth_place = Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
| death_date =
| death_place =
| occupation = Novelist, essayist
| education = State University of New York, Oswego (BA)
University of New Hampshire (MA)
| genre = Literary fiction
| website = {{url|https://www.alice-mcdermott.com}}
| caption = McDermott at the 2024 Gaithersburg Book Festival
}}
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{{cite web |author=American Booksellers Association |year=2013 |title=The American Book Awards / Before Columbus Foundation [1980–2012] |url=http://www.bookweb.org/btw/awards/The-American-Book-Awards---Before-Columbus-Foundation.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130313174235/http://bookweb.org/btw/awards/The-American-Book-Awards---Before-Columbus-Foundation.html |archive-date=March 13, 2013 |access-date=September 25, 2013 |work=BookWeb |quote=1999 [...] Charming Billy, Alice McDermott}} and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction
{{Cite web |others=(With essays by Alice Elliott Dark and Katie McDonough from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog) |title=National Book Awards 1998 |url=https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1998/ |access-date=2024-11-22 |website=National Book Foundation |language=en-US}} 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.File:Alice McDermott (49534724946).jpg 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."{{Cite web |date= |title=The lunatic in the pew - BCM - Summer 2003 |url=http://bcm.bc.edu/issues/summer_2003/ft_natural.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060707180958/http://bcm.bc.edu/issues/summer_2003/ft_natural.html |archive-date=2006-07-07 |access-date= |website=bcm.bc.edu}}
Awards and honors
{{expand list|date=January 2014}}
= Literary awards =
= 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=
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=A Bigamist's Daughter |url=https://archive.org/details/bigamistsdaughte00alic |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Random House |year=1982}}
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=That Night |year=1987 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9781429929745 |title-link=That Night (novel)}}
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=At Weddings and Wakes: A Novel |year=1992 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9781429929622}}
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=Charming Billy |year=1998 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9781429929707 |title-link=Charming Billy}}
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=Child of My Heart |year=2002 |edition=paperback 1st |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9781408806678}}
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=After This |year=2006 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9780440337300 |title-link=After This}}
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=Someone |year=2013 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9780374281090 |title-link=Someone (McDermott novel)}}
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=The Ninth Hour: A Novel |year=2017 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9780374280147}}
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=Absolution: A Novel |year=2023 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9780374610487}}{{Cite web |last=Patrick |first=Bethanne |date=2023-11-07 |title='I look for the scary story': How Alice McDermott turned the Vietnam War novel inside out |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2023-11-07/i-look-for-the-scary-story-how-alice-mcdermott-turned-the-vietnam-war-novel-inside-out |access-date=2024-03-08 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}
=Essays=
- {{cite book |ref=none |first=Alice |last=McDermott |author-mask=2 |title=What About the Baby? |year=2021 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=9780374130626}}{{Cite web |last=McDermott |first=Alice |title=Books |url=https://www.alice-mcdermott.com/books |url-status=live |access-date=2021-07-01 |website=Alice McDermott |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709182644/https://www.alice-mcdermott.com/books |archive-date=2021-07-09 }}{{Cite web |title=What About the Baby? |url=https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374130626 |url-status=live |access-date=2021-07-01 |website=Macmillan Publishers |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210603121108/https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374130626 |archive-date=2021-06-03 }}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
{{commons category|Alice McDermott}}
- {{official website |https://www.alice-mcdermott.com/}}
- {{Facebook|id=alicemcdermottauthor}}
- [https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7505.Alice_McDermott Alice McDermott] on Goodreads
- [http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=274 Biography] at BookBrowse.com
- [https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/alice-mcdermott/ Bibliography] at FantasticFiction
- [http://lccn.loc.gov/n81122668 Alice McDermott] at Library of Congress Authorities — with 14 catalog records
- [https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7474/alice-mcdermott-the-art-of-fiction-no-244-alice-mcdermott Alice McDermott, The Art of Fiction No. 244], Paris Review, Fall 2019
= Publisher profiles =
- [https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/users/alice-mcdermott Profile] at Commonweal
- [http://thesewaneereview.com/media/podcast/alice-mcdermott Profile] at The Sewanee Review
- [http://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/alice-mcdermott#/ Profile] at Whiting Foundation
= Reviews =
- [https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/absolution/ Profile] at Book Marks
- [https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/alice-mcdermott/ Reviews] by Kirkus
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20080125101011/http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/mcdermottalice/afterthis After This Reviews] at Metacritic
{{NBA for Fiction 1975–1999}}
{{American Book Awards}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:McDermott, Alice}}
Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:21st-century American women writers
Category:American Book Award winners
Category:American women novelists
Category:Catholics from New York (state)
Category:Johns Hopkins University faculty
Category:National Book Award winners
Category:Novelists from Maryland
Category:PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners
Category:People from Elmont, New York
Category:People from Hempstead, New York
Category:Place of birth missing (living people)
Category:State University of New York at Oswego alumni
Category:The New Yorker people
Category:Writers from Brooklyn
Category:Novelists from New York City