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Alice McDermott

(b.1953)

Alice McDermott is the author of several previous novels, including After This; Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes, all published by FSG.
That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. McDermott lives with her family outside Washington, D.C.

Awards: NBA (1998) see all

Genres: Literary Fiction

Novels

   A Bigamist's Daughter (1982)
   That Night (1987)
   At Weddings and Wakes (1992)
   Charming Billy (1997)
   Child of My Heart (2002)
   After This (2006)
   Someone (2013)
   The Ninth Hour (2017)
   Absolution (2023)

Non fiction show

Books containing stories by Alice McDermott

The Best American Short Stories 2022 (2022)
(Best American Short Stories)
edited by
Andrew Sean Greer

Why I Like This Story (2019)
edited by
Jackson R Bryer

Mondo Barbie (1993)
(Mondo)
edited by
Lucinda Ebersole and Richard Peabody

Awards

1998 National Book Award for Fiction : Charming Billy

Award nominations

	2024 PEN/Faulkner Award (nominee) : Absolution
	2017 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (nominee) : The Ninth Hour
	2017 Kirkus Prize for Fiction (finalist) : The Ninth Hour
	2015 Dublin Literary Award (nominee) : Someone
	2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (nominee) : Someone
	2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (nominee) : After This
	2000 Dublin Literary Award (nominee) : Charming Billy
	1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (nominee) : At Weddings and Wakes
	1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (nominee) : That Night
	1988 PEN/Faulkner Award (nominee) : That Night
	1987 National Book Award for Fiction (shortlist) : That Night
	1987 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (nominee) : That Night

Alice McDermott recommends

Dream State (2025)
Eric Puchner
"Dream State is a delight...An exquisitely rendered novel about the vagaries of fate, and friendship, and love."

Pearce Oysters (2024)
Joselyn Takacs
"Against the encroaching consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Pearce Oysters offers a precise, panoramic, and ultimately devastating vision of the oystermen, anarchists, day laborers, deadbeats and struggling families who populate Louisiana's Gulf Coast. This is fiction with a social conscience that is, more wonderful still, beautifully told: witty, vivid, consistently humane. Joselyn Takacs understands the economics of the domestic oyster industry as well as she knows the permutations of love, loyalty, and resentment that define family life-or any life. A fabulous debut: entertaining, absorbing, necessary and true."

Holding Pattern (2023)
Jenny Xie
"Jenny Xie writes sentences that absolutely sparkle on the page. Holding Pattern glimmers with wit, with intelligence, with affection and chagrin - infused with compassion, good humor, and hope."

The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman (2023)
Molly Lynch
"Molly Lynch's hypnotic debut, in its intensity and wry wisdom, evokes the early feminist novels of Margaret Atwood. Lynch is the kind of writer who can, with the turn of a phrase, set the ordinary thrumming with almost unbearable tension. She reminds us that in our current age, all of our placid hours, our every affection - most especially for our children - can be upended by dread. A writer to watch, and to celebrate."

American Ending (2023)
Mary Kay Zuravleff
"How I loved spending time with Yelena in her vivid, terrible and - most astonishingly - joyous time and place. Mary Kay Zuravleff's novel manages to capture all the struggle and the grief endured by this particular, unsung set of immigrants without ever veering into caricature or melodrama. In Yelena's clear-eyed telling, in her honesty and love, every painful obstacle to attaining that intractable American promise of a better life is made unique - wholly fresh and achingly believable. Oh, and the food! Gorgeous."

Hestia Strikes a Match (2023)
Christine Grillo
"Christine Grillo's debut novel is a wry look at our it-could-happen-here dis-Union, one that might just remind us all to take ourselves, and our arguments, less seriously. Great fun."

A Flaw in the Design (2023)
Nathan Oates
"Menace and mendacity vie with the mundane in this skillfully told tale about ambition and grief and envy. A wealthy, smarmy nephew; an aging midlist writer charged with his care; two daughters; the long Vermont winter - what could go wrong? A Flaw in the Design is an impressive debut. Cue the sequel."

Wyoming (2019)
JP Gritton
"Wyoming marks the debut of a gifted storyteller...an authentic, pitch-perfect portrait of an America too often caricatured or ignored."

The Balcony (2018)
Jane Delury
"With the assurance of a seasoned pro, Jane Delury spans decades, adopts a multitude of voices, and explores with the keen-eyed sensibility of Elena Ferrante or Claire Messud marriage, infidelity, motherhood, aging, money, greed, and the workings of fate. A complex and utterly engaging debut."

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