Paula Fox

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Paula Fox
Born (1923-04-22) April 22, 1923
New York City, New York, USA
Occupation Writer
Nationality American
Period 1966–1999 (children's lit.)
Genres Children's literature; novels, memoirs
Notable work(s)
Notable award(s) Newbery Medal
1974
Hans Christian Andersen Award
1978
Spouse(s)
  • Howard Bird (1940), divorced
  • Richard Sigerson (1948), div.
  • Martin Greenberg (1962)
Children 2 sons by Sigerson[lower-alpha 1]
Relative(s)

Paula Fox (born April 22, 1923) is an American writer of novels for adults and children and of two memoirs. For her contributions as a children's writer she won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978, the highest international recognition for a creator of children's books.[2][3] She has also won several awards for particular children's books including the 1974 Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer;[1][lower-alpha 2] a 1983 National Book Award in category Children's Fiction (paperback) for A Place Apart;[4][lower-alpha 3] and the 2008 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for A Portrait of Ivan (1969) in its German-language edition Ein Bild von Ivan.[5][lower-alpha 4]

Her adult novels went out of print in 1992. In the mid nineties she enjoyed a revival as her adult fiction was championed by a new generation of American writers.[6]

Life

Paula Fox was born in New York City on April 22, 1923. Her father, Paul Hervey Fox, wrote screenplays and taught English. Her mother was Elsie De Sola, a Cuban. He had another family after he divorced Elsie with his 2nd wife, Mary, consisting of 3 boys and a girl.

Paula's mother, Elsie De Sola Fox, rejected her at birth and left her in a foundling home. Her maternal grandmother, temporarily visiting New York City, rescued her and she was moved around Florida, Cuba and the US. Unable at the time to provide a home herself, the Cuban grandmother gave the infant to Reverend Elwood Corning and his bedridden mother in Balmville, New York.[7]

The Reverend treated Paula kindly, teaching her important things along the way. Fox first visited her parents at the age of five, when her mother treated her like a prisoner in war. The reunion was so traumatic, she wrote in her memoir Borrowed Finery, "I sensed that if she could have hidden the act she would have killed me."[8]

In 1944, Paula gave birth to a daughter out of wedlock. However, she gave the child up for adoption. This daughter, Linda Carroll, became an author and psychotherapist and gave birth to musician Courtney Love.

Fox later attended Columbia University, married Richard Sigerson, by whom she had 2 sons. She later married the literary critic and translator Martin Greenberg, and worked for years as a teacher and tutor for troubled children. Only in her 40s did she begin her first novel, Poor George, about a cynical school teacher who finds purpose—and ruin—in mentoring a vagrant teenager.[9] The novel was received well (Bernard Bergonzi in the New York Review of Books calling it "the best novel I've read in a long time") but sold poorly, a pattern that all her adult novels would follow. Desperate Characters, an acknowledged masterpiece, came next with Alfred Kazin calling it a "brilliant performance" and "quite devastating" while Lionel Trilling described it as "a reserved and beautifully realized novel". By 1992 all six of her novels were out of print.[8]

She was championed by the author Jonathan Franzen, who saw that some of her books were re-issued. She now lives in Brooklyn.

Works

Children's fiction

Memoirs

  • 2001 Borrowed Finery
  • 2005 The Coldest Winter: A Stringer in Liberated Europe

Adult fiction

  • 1967 Poor George
  • 1970 Desperate Characters
  • 1972 The Western Coast
  • 1976 The Widow's Children
  • 1984 A Servant's Tale
  • 1990 The God of Nightmares
  • 2011 News from the World: Stories and Essays

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Fox is also the birth mother of Linda Carroll (b. 1944), who was adopted by an Italian Catholic family. In turn, Carroll is the mother of Courtney Love.
    • "MOTHERS & DAUGHTERS: Courtney Love's mom, Linda Carroll, reflects on her daughter and her own birth mother", Neva Chronin, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, February 5, 2006. Retrieved 2012-02-27.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Beside winning the Newbery Medal for The Slave Dancer in 1974, Fox was a runner-up for One-Eyed Cat in 1985. Runner-up books are termed Newbery Honor Books and may display a silver seal.[1]
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Before winning the 1983 children's paperback fiction award for A Place Apart, Fox was a finalist for the overall National Book Award, Children's Literature with Blowfish Live in the Sea in 1971 and The Little Swineherd in 1979.
    • "National Book Awards – 1970". NBF. Retrieved 2012-02-08. (Select 1971 and 1979 from the top left menu.)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Beside winning the overall Children's Book prize in 2008 (Ein Bild von Ivan; A Portrait of Ivan, 1969), Fox made the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis Youth Book shortlist in 1988 (Der Schattentänzer; The Slave Dancer, 1974) and Children's Book shortlist in 2002 (Paul ohne Jacob; Radiance Descending, 1997, featuring a brother's Downs syndrome). For the latter and another book by Fox (Jenseits der Lügen; The Eagle Kite, 1995, featuring a father's homosexuality and AIDS) Cornelia Krutz-Arnold won a special prize for translation in 2002.
    • (Paula Fox, all listings). DJLP.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Newbery Medal and Honor Books, 1922–Present". Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). American Library Association (ALA).
      "The John Newbery Medal". ALSC. ALA. Retrieved 2013-07-16.
  2. ↑ "Hans Christian Andersen Awards". International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). Retrieved 2013-07-16.
  3. ↑ "Paula Fox" (pp. 58–59, by Eva Glistrup).
    The Hans Christian Andersen Awards, 1956–2002. IBBY. Gyldendal. 2002. Hosted by Austrian Literature Online. Retrieved 2013-07-23.
  4. ↑ "National Book Awards – 1983". National Book Foundation (NBF). Retrieved 2012-02-27.
  5. ↑ (Paula Fox, all listings). Datenbanksuche (database search). Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (DJLP). Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur (jugendliteratur.org). Retrieved 2013-07-16. For general information select "Infos zum Preis" or "English key facts".
  6. ↑ Edemariam, Aida (June 21, 2003). "A qualified optimist". The Guardian. Retrieved 2011-06-23. 
  7. ↑ Staino, Rocco (May 12, 2011). "Paula Fox on a Roll". School Library Journal. Retrieved 2011-05-12.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Acocella, Joan (May 16, 2011). "From Bad Beginnings". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2012-03-01. 
  9. ↑ Italie, Hillel (May 5, 2011). "Paula Fox looks back on a wayward life". newsvine.com. Retrieved 2012-03-06. 

External links

Library resources about
Paula Fox
By Paula Fox
Interviews
Authors
Illustrators
Authority control
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