Lionel Shriver

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**Lionel Shriver**
Born:	May 18, 1957 USA
Occupation:	journalist, novelist
Nationality:	American
Writing period:	late 20th century

Lionel Shriver (born May 18, 1957) is a journalist and author. She was educated at Columbia University (BA, MFA). She was born in the US and has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok and Belfast. She currently lives in London. She changed her name at the age of 15 from Margaret Ann to Lionel because she liked the sound of it.

She won the 2005 Orange Prize for her seventh published novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, a thriller and close study of maternal ambivalence, and the role it might have played in the title character's decision to murder seven of his classmates in a school shooting. The book created a lot of controversy, and achieved success through word-of-mouth.^[1]

Her previous novels include The Female of the Species (1986), Checker and the Derailleurs (1987), Ordinary Decent Criminals (1990), Game Control (1994), A Perfectly Good Family (1996) and Double Fault (1997). Her next (and eighth) novel, The Post-Birthday World, was just released in March 2007, by HarperCollins.

In July 2005, Shriver began writing a column [1] for The Guardian, in which she has shared her opinions on maternal disposition within Western society, the pettiness of British government authorities, and the importance of libraries (she plans to will whatever assets remain at her death to the Belfast Library Board, from whose libraries she checked out so many books when she lived in Northern Ireland).

She is married to jazz drummer Jeff Williams and has no children.