Lionel Shriver

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Lionel Shriver
Lionel Shriver
Born	May 18, 1957 (1957-05-18) (age 51) Gastonia, North Carolina, USA
Occupation	journalist, novelist
Nationality	American
Writing period	late 20th century

Lionel Shriver (born Margaret Ann Shriver, May 18, 1957) is a journalist and author. She was born in Gastonia, North Carolina, into a deeply religious family - her father is a Presbyterian minister. She changed her name at the age of 15 from Margaret Ann to Lionel because she felt that men had easier lives than women. She was educated at Barnard College, Columbia University (BA, MFA). She has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok and Belfast, and currently lives in London.

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 eighth novel, The Post-Birthday World, was 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.