Maureen Freely

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| name = Maureen Freely

| honorific_suffix = FRSL

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| birth_date = July {{birth year and age| 1952}}

| birth_place = Neptune, New Jersey, U.S.

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| occupation = Novelist, professor, translator, and journalist

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| alma_mater = Harvard College

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| parents = John Freely (father)

| spouse = Paul Spike(1976-1989)

Frank Longstreth (2009-2012)

| children = 4 children

2 stepchildren

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Maureen Deidre Freely (born July 1952) is an American novelist, professor, and translator. She has worked on the Warwick Writing Programme, University of Warwick, since 1996.{{Cite web|title = Professor Maureen Freely - University of Warwick|url = http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/people/freelymaureen/|website = www2.warwick.ac.uk|access-date = February 9, 2016}}

Biography

Born in Neptune, New Jersey,{{cite web|url=https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/research/gender/graduateseminars201718/pastpapers/womenandcommunity/panels/|title=Women and Community - Panels|website=Centre for the Study of Women and Gender|publisher=University of Warwick|date=2008|access-date=29 June 2024}} she is the daughter of author John Freely.{{cite magazine|url=https://www.cornucopia.net/magazine/articles/moving-freely/|title=Moving Freely|first=Maureen|last=Freey|magazine=Cornucopia|issue=25|date=2002|access-date=29 June 2024}}{{cite web |author=Jason Goodwin |author-link=Jason Goodwin |title=Enlightenment (book review) |url=http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781590200742-3 |date=n.d. |work=Washington Post Book World |access-date=July 19, 2009}} She has a sister, Eileen, and a brother, Brendan.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/25/turkey.features11|access-date=October 22, 2008|title=Istanbul after the bombs |first=Maureen |last=Freely|work=The Guardian|date=November 25, 2003}}{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/05/john-freely-obituary|title=John Freely obituary|first=Derek|last=Johns|newspaper=The Guardian|date=5 June 2017}} Maureen Freely grew up in Turkey. She graduated from Harvard College. She now lives in England.

She is the mother of four children and two step-children. Her first husband was Paul Spike, with whom she had a son and a daughter. Her second husband was Frank Longstreth, with whom she had two daughters. Freely is a fourth-generation atheist."Hijuelos has a way of making even the most uninspiring life unique, the ugliest scene beautiful. This devout atheist was moved and at moments even transported." Maureen Freely, reviewing Mr Ives' Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos, The Guardian (London), December 17, 1995, p. 15.{{Cite web |date=2023-10-24 |title=BBC Radio 4 - Books and Authors, A Good Read: Anneka Rice and Maureen Freely |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gjynbf |access-date=2023-11-28 |website=BBC |language=en-GB}}

Work

Freely lectures at the University of Warwick[http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/people/academic/freelymaureen/ Staff page] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061103051907/http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/people/academic/freelymaureen/ |date=November 3, 2006 }}, University of Warwick. and is an occasional contributor to The Guardian and The Independent newspapers. From 2014 to 2021, she served as President/Chair of English PEN, the founding centre of PEN International.{{cite web|url=https://www.englishpen.org/posts/members/english-pen-announces-new-president/|title=English PEN announces new President|publisher=English PEN|date=2014}}{{cite web|url=https://www.thebookseller.com/news/maureen-freely-voted-english-pen-president|title=Maureen Freely voted English PEN president|website=The Bookseller|first=Joshua|last=Farrington|date=12 March 2014|access-date=15 March 2023}}{{cite web|url=https://www.englishpen.org/posts/featured/philippe-sands-qc-appointed-president-of-english-pen/|title=Philippe Sands QC appointed President of English PEN|publisher=English PEN|date=2018|access-date=15 March 2023}} She was later made an Honorary Vice President.

Four of her eight novels – The Life of the Party (1986), Enlightenment (2008), Sailing Through Byzantium (2013), and My Blue Peninsula (2023) – are set in Turkey. She is also the author of The Other Rebecca (2000), a contemporary version of Daphne du Maurier's classic 1938 novel Rebecca.{{cite journal | last=Freely | first=Maureen | title=Languages in my life | journal=The Linguist | volume=45 | issue=4 | year=2006 | pages=108–110 }} Freely is an occasional contributor to Cornucopia, a magazine about Turkey.

She is best known as the Turkish-into-English translator of Orhan Pamuk's recent novels. She worked closely with Pamuk on these translations, because they often serve as the basis when his work is translated into other languages. They were both educated simultaneously at Robert College in Istanbul,{{cite journal | author = Freely, Maureen | date = May 2007 | title = Why they killed Hrant Dink | journal = Index on Censorship | volume = 36 | issue = 2 | pages = 15–29 | doi = 10.1080/03064220701334477 | s2cid = 145049618 | url = http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-06-freely-en.html | access-date = September 14, 2008 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20141006140208/http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-06-freely-en.html | archive-date = October 6, 2014 | url-status = dead | url-access = subscription }} although they did not know each other at the time. Marie Arana praised Freely's translations of Pamuk works like Snow, Istanbul: Memories and the City, and The Museum of Innocence as "vibrant and nimble" translations.{{Cite news|last=Arana|first=Marie|date=October 8, 2012|title=SILENT HOUSE Orhan Pamuk|language=en-US|newspaper=Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/silent-house-orhan-pamuk/2012/10/08/ceca21d8-0e5c-11e2-a310-2363842b7057_story.html|access-date=March 4, 2021|issn=0190-8286}}

Freely translated and wrote an introduction to Fethiye Çetin's 2008 memoir, My Grandmother.Çetin, Fethiye, My Grandmother: A Memoir, 2008. She went on to translate its sequel, The Grandchildren, as well as Tuba Çandar's biography of the assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Freely has also translated or co-translated 20th century Turkish classics by such authors as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Sait Faik Abasıyanık, Sabahattin Ali, Suat Derviş, Sevgi Soysal, and Tezer Özlü.

Freely was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2012.{{cite news|url=https://rsliterature.org/fellow/maureen-freely-3/|title=Maureen Freely|newspaper=The Royal Society of Literature}}

Bibliography

= Novels =

Mother's Helper (1979)
The Life of the Party (1985)
The Stork Club (UK, 1992; published in the U.S. as My Year with the Stork Club, 1993)
Under the Vulcania (novella, 1994)
The Other Rebecca (1996)
Enlightenment (2007)
Sailing Through Byzantium (2013)
My Blue Peninsula (2023)

= Nonfiction =

What About Us?: An Open Letter to the Mothers Feminism Forgot (1995)
The Parent Trap: Children, Families and the New Morality (2002)

= Translations =

of Orhan Pamuk:

The Black Book
Snow
Other Colors: Essays and a story
Istanbul: Memories and the City
The Museum of Innocence

of Fethiye Çetin:

My Grandmother (2008)
The Grandchildren (2014) (authored with Ayşe Gül Altınay)

of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar:

The Time Regulation Institute (2014) (translated with Alexander Dawe)

of Sait Faik Abasıyanık:

A Useless Man (2014) (translated with Alexander Dawe)

of Sabahattin Ali:

Madonna in a Fur Coat{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/21/sabahattin-ali-madonna-fur-coat-rereading |title=Sabahattin Ali's Madonna in a Fur Coat – the surprise Turkish bestseller|newspaper=The Guardian|first=Maureen|last= Freely|date=21 May 2016|access-date= June 12, 2016}} (2016) (Translated with Alexander Dawe)

of Tuba Çandar: