“Read
everything, write all the time. And if
you can do anything else that gives you equal pleasure and allows you to sleep
soundly at night, do that instead. The
writing life is an odd one, to say the least.”
– Alice McDermott
Born
in Brooklyn, NY, on this date in 1953, McDermott is a writer
of numerous short stories and 8 novels as well as Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins
University in Maryland. All of her
novels have earned accolades and awards, led by Charming Billy, for
which she won both the American Book Award and
the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
The product of Catholic
elementary and high schools, she studied at state universities after that,
earning degrees in English and writing. Prior
to her current position, she served as
writer-in-residence at both Lynchburg College and Hollins College in Virginia
and was lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire, where she
earned her Master’s degree.
Her
short stories have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, journals and
newspapers including Redbook, The New Yorker, and Seventeen,
The New York Times and The Washington Post. What makes writing click for her?
“I've got to hear the rhythm of the
sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things
transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language
with which they're described,” she said. “That's what I love when I read.”
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