Alice Mattison
Alice Mattison is an American novelist and short story writer.
Life
Mattison was born in Brooklyn and attended Queens College and Harvard University, where she received a doctorate in literature. She has lived in New Haven, Connecticut since the 1970s. She has taught fiction in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Writing at Bennington College since 1995 and at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Mattison has also taught at Brooklyn College, Yale University and Albertus Magnus College.Mattison and the poet Jane Kenyon met when both published books with the cooperative press Alice James Books, and forged a close friendship and working relationship. Mattison has written about their friendship and mutual influence in an essay published in the Michigan Quarterly Review, entitled "Let It Grow in the Dark Like a Mushroom: Writing with Jane Kenyon."
Career
Mattison began her career as a poet, publishing a collection of poems in 1980. She began writing short stories in the 1980s. Her first collection of stories, Great Wits, was published in 1988, and her first novel, Field of Stars, in 1992.Mattison's writing has been characterized in a review of "When We Argued All Night" : "Her prose is so crisp that along with all the pleasures of fiction she manages to deliver the particular intellectual satisfactions of an essay or a documentary."
Selected works
;Books- "Conscience,", Pegasus, 2018
- "The Kite and the String",, Viking, 2016
- "When We Argued All Night",, Harper Perennial, 2012.
- "Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn" Harper Perennial, September, 2008.
- "In Case We’re Separated: Connected Stories" William Morrow/HarperCollins, October, 2005; New York Times Notable Book, 2005. Paperback, Harper Perennial, 2006.
- "The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman" William Morrow/HarperCollins, August, 2004. Paperback, Harper Perennial, 2005.
- "The Book Borrower" 1999, William Morrow and Co. Paperback, Harper Perennial, 2000. Reissued, HarperPerennial, 2008; New York Times Notable Book, 1999.
- "Men Giving Money, Women Yelling", Morrow, 1997. Paperback, Quill, 1998; New York Times Notable Book, 1997.
- "Hilda and Pearl" Morrow, 1995; large print edition, Thorndike Press, 1995. Paperback, Harper Perennial, 2001.
- "The Flight of Andy Burns", Morrow, 1993.
- "Field of Stars" Morrow, 1992.
- "Great Wits" Morrow, 1988. Paperback, Penguin,1990.
- "Animals" Alice James Books, 1980.
;Stories in journals
- “Raw Edge” Threepenny Review, Summer, 2013.
- “The Vandercook” Ecotone, 2011.
- “Brooklyn Circle” The New Yorker, November 12, 2007
- “The Bad Jew” Glimmer Train, Fall, 2005
- “Election Day” Michigan Quarterly Review, Summer, 2005
- “In The Dark, Who Pats The Air” Shenandoah, Spring/Summer, 2005
- “The Odds It Would Be You” Threepenny Review, Spring, 2005
- “Pastries At the Bus Stop” Ms. Magazine, Spring, 2005
Awards
- Many of Alice Mattison's short stories have been cited for distinction in The Best American Short Stories
- Four of her short stories have been awarded the Pushcart Prize, including “Three Bartlett Pears”, "The Odds It Would Be You", "I Am Not Your Mother" and "The Disappearing Teapot”
- "The Vandercook", was included in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, 2012.
Mattison's novel, In Case We’re Separated, won the Connecticut Book Award for fiction in 2006.
Interviews
- , “The Ecotone Interview With Alice Mattison”
- , “An Interview with Alice Mattison”, Writer’s Chronicle, December, 2006.
- ,The Very Telling: Conversations with American Writers, UPNE, 2006.