Mark Childress
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Mark Childress (born 1957, Monroeville, Alabama) is an American novelist. He has written A World Made of Fire, V for Victor, Tender, Crazy in Alabama, Gone for Good, and One Mississippi.
Childress grew up in Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, and Louisiana. After graduation from The University of Alabama in 1978, Childress was a reporter for The Birmingham News, Features Editor of Southern Living magazine, and Regional Editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Childress is the author of six novels:
- A World Made of Fire (Knopf, 1984)
- V For Victor (Knopf, 1988)
- Tender (Harmony, 1990)
- Crazy in Alabama (Putnam, 1993)
- Gone for Good (Knopf, 1998)
- One Mississippi (July 2006, Little, Brown).
His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday Review, Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Travel and Leisure, and other national and international publications.
Tender, a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection, was named to several Ten Best of 1990 lists, and appeared on many national bestseller lists. Crazy in Alabama, a featured selection of the Literary Guild, has been published in the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Russia, Holland, Denmark, and Poland, and appeared on many bestseller lists and Ten Best of 1993 lists. Crazy was named The (London) Spectator’s “Book of the Year” for 1993 and a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year,” and was on the Der Spiegel bestseller list in Germany for 10 months.
"One Mississippi" was a summer reading selection of Good Morning America, O: The Oprah Magazine, People magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and was nominated for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Association's "Book of the Year" award. Stephen King named it as #3 on his list of the "Ten Best Books of 2006" in Entertainment Weekly.
Childress has received the Thomas Wolfe Award, The University of Alabama’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Alabama Library Association’s Writer of the Year.
He has also written three picture books for children, Joshua and Bigtooth (1992), Joshua and the Big Bad Blue Crabs (1996) (both from Little, Brown), and Henry Bobbity Is Missing And It Is All Billy Bobbity’s Fault (Crane Hill Publishers, 1996).
He wrote the screenplay of the Columbia Pictures film Crazy in Alabama, directed by Antonio Banderas, and starring Melanie Griffith, an official selection of the Venice and San Sebastian film festivals in 1999.
Childress is now working on his seventh novel. He lives in New York City and Dallas.
