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
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.
fondness great
I have a great fondness for the liars in my stories.
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.
call cause dramatist handy life pause rituals understand weddings
I think it's handy for a dramatist of any sort, if I can call myself that, to make use of weddings and wakes, to make use of those moments and those rituals that cause us to pause and look back or look forward and understand that life has changed.
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.
sooner-or-later sells good-writers
A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.