Lucy Grealy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Lucinda Margaret Grealy (June 3, 1963–December 18, 2002) was a poet and memoirist who wrote Autobiography of a Face (1994). This critically acclaimed book describes her childhood and early adolescence experience with cancer of the jaw, which left her with a disfigured face. Grealy also published a collection of essays in 2000, titled As Seen on TV: Provocations.

She was born in 1963 in Dublin, and her family moved to the United States in April 1967, settling in Spring Valley, New York. She was diagnosed at the age of 9 with a rare form of cancer called Ewing's sarcoma. Treatment for this terrible and often fatal cancer (Grealy reports an estimated 5% survival rate) left her disfigured, and over the following years she had many facial reconstructive surgeries. The book describes how she weathered the cruelty of schoolmates and others, suffering taunts and endless stares from strangers.

At 18, Lucy entered Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. Here she made her first real friends and nurtured her love of poetry. She graduated in 1985 and went on to study at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. In Iowa, she lived with fellow writer Ann Patchett, whose best-selling novel Bel Canto won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award. Ann and Lucy's friendship grew out of their literary ambition and passion for writing, and it is the poignant subject of Patchett's recent memoir, Truth & Beauty (2004).

Following her final reconstructive surgery, Lucy became dependent upon her prescribed painkiller, OxyContin, as she had earlier in life with codeine. This dependency in turn introduced her to heroin. She grappled with this addiction privately for the last few years of her life.

Towards the end of her life, Lucy struggled with bouts of depression and drug abuse. She died of a presumed accidental drug overdose on December 18, 2002, in New York, at the age of 39.

Lucy's sister, Suellen Grealy, was initially and still is opposed to Ann Patchett's depiction of Lucy in Truth & Beauty. She claims that Patchett and the book's publisher Harper Collins stole the Grealy family's right to grieve privately.