Alice McDermott
Alice McDermott
Alice McDermottis an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 June 1953
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
book humility writing
A book tour is, first and foremost, an exercise in humility.
conscious trying
I'm very conscious of trying to make something epic out of something small and ordinary.
anyone magical moss playwright romantic school struck
In grammar school I read 'Act One' by Moss Hart, and being a playwright struck me as the most magical and romantic career anyone could have... But I never did write a play.
accept characters death interested life move time
I'm interested in characters who should know better, who know they should give up, move on, accept life as it is, with all its constraints - life, death, time - but don't.
anywhere legal novel original pad
I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.
background class early ethic job learned middle might nobody quite work
I learned really early on that I had to treat it as if it were a real job. This might be my middle class background - the Irish work ethic, which isn't quite the same as the Protestant work ethic - but still, it's, 'Get a job and show up every day. Be there. And don't complain. Who do you think you are: you're nobody special; go to work.'
felt grew san
I'm a coastal person. I grew up in Long Island and lived in San Diego. I felt landlocked in Pittsburgh. Psychically, it just wasn't the place for me.
dramatic fertile interested observed
I'm more interested in character than events. I've observed that about myself as a writer. I find events, even the most dramatic sort, not to be such fertile ground.
I have not won far more awards than I have won.
books spend takes tend time whatever work
I'm writing all the time. I tend to work on at least two books simultaneously. I'll spend time with one, and then I'll spend time with the other. Finishing takes whatever time it takes.
drawn
I'm not usually drawn to memoir - many run the risk of self-aggrandizement or score-settling.
hear love music ordinary rhythm
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. That's what I love when I read.
adjective jewish limiting noun russian whether
Any adjective you put before the noun 'writer' is going to be limiting in some way. Whether it's feminist writer, Jewish writer, Russian writer, or whatever.
meant pin
A perfect poem you can't pin down and say, 'This is exactly what it meant to me.' It's not a self-help manual.