Meg Wolitzer | |
---|---|
Wolitzer at the 2011 Texas Book Festival, Austin | |
Born | (1959-05-28) May 28, 1959 (age 65) New York City, U.S. |
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Smith College Brown University |
Period | 1982–present |
Genre | Literary fiction |
Notable works | The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, The Interestings |
Spouse | Richard Panek |
Signature | |
Website | |
megwolitzer |
Meg Wolitzer (born May 28, 1959) is an American novelist, known for The Wife, The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, The Interestings, and The Female Persuasion. She works as an instructor in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.
Life and career
Wolitzer was born in Brooklyn and raised in Syosset, New York, the daughter of novelist Hilma Wolitzer (née Liebman) and psychologist Morton Wolitzer. She was raised Jewish. Wolitzer studied creative writing at Smith College and graduated from Brown University in 1981.
She wrote her first novel, Sleepwalking, a story of three college girls obsessed with poetry and death, while still an undergraduate; it was published in 1982. Her following books include Hidden Pictures (1986), This Is Your Life (1988), Surrender, Dorothy (1998), The Wife (2003), The Position (2005), The Ten-Year Nap (2008), The Uncoupling (2011), and The Interestings (2013). Her short story "Tea at the House" was featured in 1998's Best American Short Stories collection. Her novel for younger readers, The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, was published in 2011.
She also co-authored, with Jesse Green, a book of cryptic crosswords, Nutcrackers: Devilishly Addictive Mind Twisters for the Insatiably Verbivorous (1991), and has written about the relative difficulty women writers face in gaining critical acclaim.
She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, Skidmore College, and, most recently, was a guest artist at Princeton University. Over the past decade she has also taught at both Stony Brook Southampton's MFA in Creative Writing program and the Southampton Writers Conference and the Florence Writers Workshop. Three films have been based on her work: This Is My Life, scripted and directed by Nora Ephron; the 2006 made-for-television movie Surrender, Dorothy; and the 2017 drama The Wife, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce.
The Uncoupling was the subject of the first coast-to-coast virtual book club discussion, via Skype.
As of 2018, Wolitzer resides in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with her husband, science writer Richard Panek.
Works
Novels
- Sleepwalking (1982) ISBN 9781594633133, OCLC 862097178
- Hidden Pictures (1986)
- This Is Your Life (1988)
- Friends for Life 1994 ISBN 9780821750377, OCLC 32939325
- Surrender, Dorothy (1998)
- The Wife (2003) ISBN 9780099478195, OCLC 908803171
- The Position (2005)
- The Ten-Year Nap (2008) ISBN 9781594483547, OCLC 1003299133
- The Uncoupling (2011) ISBN 9781594485657, OCLC 1021096351
- The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman (2011)
- The Interestings (2013) ISBN 9780099584094, OCLC 1001585374
- Belzhar (2014) ISBN 9780142426296, OCLC 904081649
- The Female Persuasion (2018) ISBN 9781594488405, OCLC 993689357
- To Night Owl from Dogfish (2019) ISBN 9781984815057
Children’s Books
- Millions of Maxes (2022)
References
- ^ Lyall, Sarah (2018-03-23). "Why Now May (Finally) Be Meg Wolitzer's Moment". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-03-26.
- "Wolitzer, Hilma 1930-". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 29 December 2021.
- "Q&A: Meg Wolitzer on Sex, Suburbs — and the Workmen's Circle". The Jewish Daily Forward. April 28, 2011. Archived from the original on 7 June 2012.
- "Writing About Women Who Are Soccer Moms Without Soccer". New York Times. March 25, 2008. Retrieved September 4, 2011.
- Meg Wolitzer (March 30, 2012). "The Second Shelf". The New York Times. Retrieved April 29, 2013.
- "Faculty & Staff | Southampton Arts".
- "New chapter begins for book clubs as author takes discussion online". Edmonton Journal. September 4, 2011. Retrieved September 4, 2011.
- Doll, Jen (May 9, 2013). "The Author Eveyrone's Interested In: Meg Wolitzer and 'The Interestings'". The Atlantic.
- Gentry, Amy. "Review: 'The Female Persuasion' by Meg Wolitzer". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2018-03-26.
- "Meg Wolitzer's New Novel is Right for the #MeToo Moment". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 2018-03-26.
External links
- Quotations related to Meg Wolitzer at Wikiquote
- Meg Wolitzer at IMDb
- 1959 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American novelists
- 21st-century American novelists
- American women novelists
- American women short story writers
- People from Syosset, New York
- Brown University alumni
- Smith College alumni
- University of Houston faculty
- Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty
- 20th-century American women writers
- 21st-century American women writers
- 20th-century American short story writers
- 21st-century American short story writers
- Novelists from Texas
- Novelists from Iowa
- Writers from Brooklyn
- Jewish American novelists
- American women academics
- 21st-century American Jews