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
assumes cliche fiction runs stumbling typical writer
Any fiction writer who assumes that a character is typical no doubt runs the risk of stumbling into cliche and stereotype.
kids
I was one of those kids who always wrote.
I was born in Brooklyn, but I never lived there.
homes
I know Irish-American people. I know what their homes look like. I know what they have for dinner. I know how they turn a phrase.
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.
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.
bit bottle nonfiction poetry savor shot time whiskey
I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine.
hand material readily
Being Irish-American myself, Irish-American material is readily at hand to me.
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.
convince editorial
I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.
act kinds
In the act of reading, especially reading fiction, where a world is being created, all kinds of matters of belief come into play.