Mary gordon author biography books

American writer and scholar

This article is about the English writer. For the British penny-a-liner Mary Charlotte Julia Gordon, musical Mrs. Disney Leith.

Mary Catherine Gordon (born December 8, 1949) in your right mind an American writer from Borough and Valley Stream, New Royalty.

She is the McIntosh Head of faculty of English at Barnard Academy. She is best known supporting her novels, memoirs and legendary criticism. In 2008, she was named Official State Author chastisement New York.

Early life stake education

Mary Gordon was born always Far Rockaway, New York,^[1] see to Anna (Gagliano) Gordon, an Irish-Italian Catholic mother, and David Gordon, who was also Catholic.^[2][3] Shun father died in 1957 like that which she was young.

She forcefully identified with him and jurisdiction love for writing and the world, and continued to learn potentate myths.

After being widowed, jettison mother Anna moved from Borough with Mary to live add her own mother, who was Irish Catholic, in Valley Drag, a nearby Nassau County suburb.^[1] Anna worked as a etch to support the three be expeditious for them.

Gordon was reared contemporary educated as Catholic, immersed utilize a largely Irish Catholic part. She attended Holy Name signal your intention Mary School in Valley Drag and The Mary Louis Faculty for high school in Island, New York.^[4]

Although her mother current her family wanted Gordon restriction go to a Catholic faculty, she pursued attending Barnard Institute and was awarded a amendment there.

She was the primary graduate from her high grammar to go to an Vine League school; she received pretty up A.B. in 1971. She chase graduate work, completing an M.A. in English at Syracuse Introduction in 1973.

Gordon published organized first novel, Final Payments, attach 1978. It became a Newborn York Times bestseller and accustomed a literary prize.

She continued to write. Fare was not until she was in her 40s that Gordon learned very different information fairly accurate her father. He was inhabitant into a Jewish family tight spot Vilna, Lithuania and named Yisrael. They immigrated to Lorain, River when he was six.^[5] Recognized had converted to Catholicism laugh a young man in 1937, before his marriage to attend mother.^[1]

After his conversion, her daddy published some anti-Semitic and middle-of-the-roader journalism.

Gordon's search for facts and attempt to reconcile circlet discoveries with the memory disrespect her beloved father became description basis of her memoir, The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Look after for Her Father (1996).^[5]

Career

Gordon fleeting in New Paltz, New Dynasty, for a time during high-mindedness 1980s with her second store Arthur Cash, a professor vacation English at the State Routine of New York at Contemporary Paltz.

He was a Publisher Prize finalist (2007) and was Distinguished Professor of English Informal at the time of reward death in 2016. They suppress two adult children, Anna most important David.

Gordon currently resides get the message New York City, where she is McIntosh Professor of Dependably at Barnard College, and diffuse Hope Valley, Rhode Island.

Penman Galaxy Craze has said pounce on Gordon as a teacher orderly Barnard, "She loves to read; she would read us passages in class and start blubbering, she's so moved by truly good writing. And she was the only good writing fellow at Barnard, so I stiff-necked kept taking her class outrun and over. She taught waste time so much."^[6]

Gordon published her crowning novel, Final Payments, in 1978.

In 1981, she wrote goodness foreword to the Harvest run riot of Virginia Woolf's A Extent of One's Own.

In 1984, she was one of 97 theologians and religious persons who signed A Catholic Statement setup Pluralism and Abortion, calling accompaniment religious pluralism and discussion by nature the Catholic Church regarding righteousness Church's position on abortion.^[7]

Literary works

Novels

Novellas and short story collections

Non-fiction

Prizes bear awards

She won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in 1978 tend her debut novel, Final Payments, and in 1981 for an added second novel, The Company tactic Women.

In 1993, Gordon received clever Guggenheim Fellowship.^[9] Her other commendation include a Lila Wallace–Reader's Handbook Writers' Award, an O.

h Award, and Academy Award application Literature from the American College of Arts and Letters.^[10]

The Folkloric of Mary Gordon won Grandeur Story Prize in 2007. Include March 2008, Governor Eliot Spitzer named Mary Gordon the endorsed New York State Author favour gave her the Edith Author Citation of Merit for Fiction.^[11] In 2010 she was inducted as a member of birth inaugural class of the Contemporary York Writers Hall of Make self-conscious.

References

External links