Meg Wolitzer

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Meg Wolitzer
Born (1959-05-28) May 28, 1959
Long Island, New York United States
Occupation Novelist, Essayist
Nationality American
Genres Literary fiction
Notable work(s) The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, The Interestings
megwolitzer.com

Meg Wolitzer (born May 28, 1959) is an American writer, best known for The Wife, The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, and The Interestings. She currently works as an instructor in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

Biography

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.[1] Her following books include Hidden Pictures (1986), This Is Your Life (1988), Friends for Life (1994), Surrender, Dorothy (1998), The Wife (2003), The Position (2005), The Ten-Year Nap (2008), and The Uncoupling (2011). Her short story "Tea at the House" was featured in 1998's Best American Short Stories collection. She has written two novels for younger readers: Caribou (1985) and The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, 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. [2]

She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and Skidmore College and has written several Hollywood screenplays, most of which are unproduced. Two films have been based on her work; This Is My Life, scripted and directed by Nora Ephron, and the 2006 TV movie Surrender, Dorothy, starring Diane Keaton and directed by Charles McDougall.

The Uncoupling was the subject of the first coast-to-coast virtual book club discussion, via Skype.[3]

Meg Wolitzer was born on Long Island, New York. She is the daughter of novelist Hilma Wolitzer. She lives in New York with her husband Richard Panek, also a writer, and two sons.

Reviews

  • "Here are three words that land with a thunk: gender, writing and identity. Yet in The Wife, Meg Wolitzer has fashioned a light-stepping, streamlined novel from just these dolorous, bitter-sounding themes. Maybe that's because she's set them all smoldering: rage might be the signature emotion of the powerless, but in Wolitzer's hands, rage is also very funny."[4]
  • "At this point in her career, Meg Wolitzer deserves to be a household name. Every few years she turns out a sparkling novel that manages to bring the shine back to big, tarnished issues of gender politics, such as women's pull between work and family, or the role of sexuality in family dynamics."[5]
  • "[The Interestings'] inclusive vision and generous sweep place it among the ranks of books like Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” and Jeffrey Eugenides’s “Marriage Plot.” “The Interestings” is warm, all-American and acutely perceptive about the feelings and motivations of its characters, male and female, young and old, gay and straight; but it’s also stealthily, unassumingly and undeniably a novel of ideas." [6]

Bibliography

Novels

  • The Interestings (2013)
  • The Uncoupling (2011)
  • The Ten-Year Nap (2008)
  • The Position (2005)
  • The Wife (2003)
  • Surrender, Dorothy (1998)
  • Friends for Life (1994)
  • This Is Your Life (1988)
  • Hidden Pictures (1986)
  • Sleepwalking (1982)

Nonfiction

  • Nutcrackers: Devilishly Addictive Mind Twisters for the Insatiably Verbivorous (1991)

References

  1. ↑ "Writing About Women Who Are Soccer Moms Without Soccer". New York Times. March 25, 2008. Retrieved September 4, 2011. 
  2. ↑ Meg Wolitzer (March 30, 2012). "The Second Shelf". New York Times. Retrieved April 29, 2013. 
  3. ↑ "New chapter begins for book clubs as author takes discussion online". Edmonton Journal. September 4, 2011. Retrieved September 4, 2011. 
  4. ↑ Claire Dederer (April 20, 2003). "http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/books/in-the-shadow-of-the-big-boys.html?ref=megwolitzer". New York Times. Retrieved September 4, 2011. 
  5. ↑ Heller McAlpin (April 10, 2011). "The Uncoupling (Review)". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved September 4, 2011. 
  6. ↑ Liesl Schillinger (April 19, 2013). "The Interestings (Review)". New York Times. Retrieved April 26, 2013. 


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