Alison Lurie

Alison Stewart Lurie (September 3, 1926 – December 3, 2020) was an American novelist and academic. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she wrote many non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress. Quotes Children who seem unlikely to do well ... sometimes find that their work stays on the kitchen wall longer than usual; and so it was with me. I was encouraged to be creative past the usual age because I didn't have much else going for me. I was a skinny, plain, off-looking little girl, deaf in one badly damaged ear from a birth injury, and with a resulting atrophy of the facial muscles that pulled my mouth sideways whenever I opened it to speak and turned my smile into a sort of sneer. I was clever, or, as one of my teachers put it, "too clever for her own good," but not especially charming or affectionate or helpful. I couldn't seem to learn to ride a bike or sing in tune, and I was always the last person chosen for any team. "No One Asked Me to Write a Novel", The New York Times (June 6, 1982), sec. 7, p. 13 You come to a certain age and you know there is no event that can ruin your life. Or completely change it. From an interview with Sally Vincent, as cited in "What you always knew", The Guardian (17 September 2005) External links Category:1926 births Category:2020 deaths Category:Women born in the 1920s Category:Novelists from the United States Category:Non-fiction authors from the United States Category:Essayists from the United States Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Pulitzer Prize winners Category:Literary critics Category:Cornell University faculty Category:People from Chicago