Alice Sebold Biography
Alice Sebold is an American writer. She is known to have published three books Lucky (1999), The Lovely Bones (2002), and The Almost Moon (2007) over the course of her career. Her books are written in the genres of Literary fiction and memoirs.
She studied at the Great Valley High School in Malvern where she graduated in 1980. Soon after she joined Syracuse University. while she was still a freshman, she was raped while walking home through a park. She took the matter to the police but no suspects were found. On the 5th of October that year, she recognized her attacker while she was walking down a street near the campus.
Alice then notified the police and the attacker were caught. She testified against him in court and the man was convicted of rape and sodomy. He served 25 years in jail. Her attacker is out of prison now. She graduated from university in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree. After this, she studied at the University of Houston for a while then moved to Manhattan where she spent the next ten years. In this time, she started doing several waiting jobs while still actively pursuing her writing career.
In those times, many of her writings never came to completion. Soon after, she started using heroin. With this, she became a regular drug and substance abuser, something she now is “not particularly proud of” and could not believe that she did. Sometime later, she relocated to Southern California where she resided in a cabin in the woods with no electricity. In 1998, she attained her MFA from the University of California Irvine.
Alice Sebold Age
Alice was born on the 6th of September 1963 in Madison, Wisconsin in the United States. She, however, was raised in the suburbs of Philadephia. she is 55 years old.
Alice Sebold Writing
While she lived in New York, Alice began writing a book as a 10-page assignment for her class. This book would later come out to be “Lucky”. Next, she started writing the novel, “Monsters” when she was 33 years old. The novel talks about the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. The novel came to become “The Lovely Bones” which was noted for its show of a moving, passionate interest in and love for ordinary life as its most wonderful, and most awful, even at its most mundane despite the fact that it is a very disturbing story.
With this, The New York Times noted that Alice has a skill for capturing both the ordinary and extraordinary in lyrical, unsentimental prose. The book remained on The New York Times’ bestseller list for over a year. In 2010, a film version of the book was released by film director Peter Jackson. In 2007, she released her second novel, “The Almost Moon”. The book was as disturbing as the first as seen with its beginning that goes as, “When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.” Alice has also guest-edited “The Best American Short Stories 2009”.
Alice Sebold Books
- Lucky (memoir, 2002; originally published in 1999)
- The Lovely Bones (novel, 2002)
- The Almost Moon (novel, 2007)
Alice Sebold Awards
- 2002: Bram Stoker Award for First Novel in 2002.
- 2003: American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award for Adult Fiction
- She is also noted to be an alumna of the Ragdale Foundation
Alice Sebold Quotes
It’s hard, because when you talk about process or your characters ruling your narrative, it sounds like you have no control, but obviously you’re ultimately the author, so you do have control.
I think it’s an interesting thing to me, because we have this desire for everything to be explained to us. But if you go through your daily actions, very little ends up having a written-down explanation for why things happen, or why people do specific things.
Depending on where I am in the process, sometimes I have a page count and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I have an hour count; sometimes I’m just happy to string a few words together. I do keep pretty rigorous hours, because otherwise you never get anything done.
For me, heaven would be a lack of alienation. The whole time I was growing up, I felt comfort was inherently evil. I think that, for me, heaven isn’t about couches and milk shakes and never having a troubling thought again. I think understanding is the way to gain perspective – and therefore can live among those hideous realities. You can live with them.
The relationship with the words someone uses is more intimate and integrated than just a quick read and a blurb can ever be. This intimacy – the words on the page being sent back and forth from engaged editor to open author – is unique in my experience.