MARY HIGGINS CLARK b. 1929
Mary Higgins Clark was born on December 24, 1929 and raised in New York She is of Irish descent. Her father died when she was ten leaving her mother with three children to raise. After graduating from high school Mary went to secretarial school so she could help her mother with the family finances. Soon afterwards she became a stewardess and satisfied her thirst for traveling.
She married her neighbour whom she had known since she was sixteen, but was left a young widow with five children by the death of her husband, Warren Clark, from a heart attack in 1964. She had put all her energy into her children's education.
Mary Higgins Clark's literary activity began with writing radio scripts. Her first book was a biographical novel about the life of George Washington, Aspire to the Heavens. It was followed by a suspense novel Where Are the Children?, which became a bestseller and marked a turning Point in her life and career.
In 1974 Mary Higgins Clark decided to catch up on her own education entering Fordham University at Lincoln Center and graduated from it with B.A. in philosophy in 1979.
Since then she has won many honorary doctorates and other honours, among them The Women of Achievement, Irish Woman of the Year, the Gold Medal of Honor from the American-Irish Historical Society, the Spirit of Achievement Award from the Albert Einstein College of. Medicine of Yeshiva University, and the National Arts Club's first Gold Medal in Education. Mary Higgins Clark was made a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, a Dame of Malta, and a Dame of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem. She was awarded the Grand Prix de Literature of France in 1980.
Her bestsellers following Where Are the Children? are: A Stranger is Watching (1978), The Cradle-Will Fall (1980), A Cry in the Night (1982), Stillwatch (1984), Weep No More My Lady (1987), While My Pretty One Sleeps (1989), The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories (1989), Loves Music, Loves to Dance (1991), All Around the Town (1992), I'll Be Seeing You (1993), Remember Me (1994), The Lottery Winner: Alvirah and Willy Stories (1994), Le$ Me Call You Sweetheart (1995), Silent Night (1995), Moonlight Becomes You (1996), My Gal Sunday (1996), Pretend You Don't See Her (1997).
JOYCE CAROL OATES b. 1938
Joyce Carol Oates, born in Lockport, New York, is one of the most prolific writers of the second half of the twentieth century. She published many novels and collections of stories and has written numerous poems, plays, and critical essays, and she shows few signs of slowing her output. She published over sixty books since her first appeared in 1964. Her books - whether novels, books of poems, collections of stories, or nonfiction memoirs on subjects like boxing - always draw serious critical attention and more often than not land on the bestseller lists, and she has even written suspense novels pseudonymously as Rosamond Smith. Her works possess a great amount of energy and intensity.
Born in Lockport, New York, she holds degrees from Syracuse and the University of Wisconsin, and she is writer-in-residence at Princeton University, where she also codirects, with her husband, the Ontario Review Press.
She began writing at an early age. Her first book With Shuddering Fall was published in 1964. Since then, she produced novels, collections of stories, and volumes of poetry at a rapid pace. Her works of fiction include Wheel of Love and Other Stories (1970), The Assassins (1975), Do With Me What You Will (1978), The Seduction and Other Stories (1980), Bellefleur (1980), A Bloodsmore Romance (1982), and Mysteries of Winterthum (1984). Them (1968), a novel of African-American life in Detroit, won a National Book Award in 1970.
Oates's work is often violent, a fact for which she has been criticized on numerous occasions. In response, she has remarked that these comments are "always ignorant, always sexist," implying that different standards are often applied to the work of women authors whose realism may be too strong for some tastes.
Oates is known as one of the most distinguished story writers of America. Among the collections of stories are The Hungry Ghosts (1974), The Goddess and Other Women (1974), The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese (1975), Crossing the Border (1976).
Herstory Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, which is based on a story about a serial rapist and killer known as "The Pied Piper of Tucson", was filmed in 1985. Indicating the long popularity of this story, Oates published a collection of prose pieces in 1999 titledWhere I've Been, Where I'm Going?
She is also the author of collections of poetry, Angel Fire (1973), The Fabulous Beasts (1975), Love and Its Derangements and Other Poems (1977). She has received numerous awards for her work.
Her thirtieth novel, Blonde (2000), took as its subject the life of Marilyn Monroe.
ANNE TYLER b. 1941
Anne Tyler-was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and spent her childhood and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Then she moved with her family to Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. Inspired by the work of Eudora Welty, Anne Tyler devotes much of her fiction to exposing the latent, unusual characteristics of outwardly ordinary people. Her novels reveal sensitive truths about the contemporary family. Many of Tyler's novels center on a woman character, but that woman is of most interest because of her role within a family unit. Few of Tyler's women determine their own destiny, free from the responsibilities of child rearing or family participation. She published her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes in 1962. Since then she has published several more novels. Her next novels grew in dimension and impact. They were A Slipping-Down Life (1970), The Clock Winder (1972), Celestial Navigation (1974), Searching for Caleb (1976), and Earthly Possessions (1977). Tyler gained widespread critical praise with her novels Morgan's Passing (1980), Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), Saint Maybe (1991), Ladder of Years (1995), A Patchwork Planet (1998), and Back When We Were Grownups (2001). Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons (1988) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for fiction. She is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She is also the author of a vast number of short stories and book reviews.
Anne Tyler displays ability to create well-developed, realistic characters and evoke an emotional response through an unsentimental portrayal of the characters' tragic lives.
The Accidental Tourist.Macon and Sarah got married when they were very young. First it was interesting to learn the art of living together. But the reader discovers that they are different. Sarah is haphazard, mercurial and unconcerned while Macon is steady and methodical. Sarah thinks crowds are exciting while Macon is homesick and house-proud. House comfort is for him a kind of panacea. Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and strangeness and anything out of the ordinary. He writes series of guidebooks "The Accidental Tourist" for people forced to travel on business to pretend they never left home. He hated to travel himself but he loved the writing. For some time they learned to ignore the differences, staying two different people, and not always even friends. They had different approaches to the upbringing of their son Ethan. When the boy was murdered at the camp they blame each other because they let him go to the camp. They become even more detached from each other and finally divorce is inevitable. Grounded by loneliness, comfort, and a somewhat odd domestic life, unwillingness of Edward - Ethan's dog - to compromise makes him turn for help to Muriel - a surprising new adventure, arriving in the form of a fuzzy-haired dog obedience trainer who promises to turn his life around and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life. She is a persistent and strong person whom fate has slept pretty hard but who didn't give up. Muriel does everything to pull Macon out of his capsule. He again learned to believe people, to love children and enjoy life. But he is afraid of his feelings and attachment to Muriel and her son Alexander. He is older, and they also are different: Muriel is fond of traveling, Macon hates it; she is energetic, vivacious, and unpredictable while Macon remains steady. This is a beautiful love story about how one brave woman brings joy and purpose to the life of a man who has stumbled through life and finds himself sinking. Muriel is the character of a generation. She loves Macon with all her heart and she turns the accidental tourist into a happy traveler.