Pulitzer Prize Nominee Alice McDermott to Speak at Cornell

Novelist Alice McDermott, a three-time Pulitzer nominee, will read from her work at Cornell on Thursday, Oct. 11 at 4:30 p.m. The Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading will take place at the Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium in Klarman Hall. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a catered reception and book signing in the English Lounge. 

McDermott is the author of eight novels, most recently "The Ninth Hour," a finalist for the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. "After This," "At Weddings and Wakes" and "That Night" have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and her novel "Charming Billy" won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.

“McDermott’s depictions of Irish-American family life make her an especially fitting writer to give the Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading,” said Helena Viramontes, professor of English and director of Cornell's Creative Writing Program. 

This Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading, a part of the Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series, is sponsored by the Creative Writing Program of Cornell’s English Department. The reading is made possible by Eamon McEneaney’s Cornell teammates, family and friends. 

Yvette Lisa Ndlovu is a communications assistant for the College of Arts & Sciences.

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 A headshot of novelist Alice McDermott