Fun Facts Friday: Alison Lurie

Alison Lurie (3 September, 1926 – 3 December, 2020) was an American writer of novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. Her book, Foreign Affairs won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Books by Alison Lurie*

1. Alison Stewart Lurie was born in Chicago, but was raised in White Plains, NY. Her father, Harry Lawrence Lurie, a Latvian immigrant, was a sociologist, and her mother, Bernice Lurie, a Scottish immigrant, was a book critic and journalist.
2. Ms. Lurie was deaf in one ear and had damaged facial muscles due to complication at birth with forceps delivery.
3. The author graduated from Radcliffe College with a degree in history and literature. She worked for the Oxford University Press as a reader before marrying Jonathan Bishop.
4. The couple moved around the Northeast United States before settling at Cornell University in 1961. The future author taught at the college humor, folklore, literature, and writing.
5. The couple’s three sons were born during that period, and it’s also when Alison Lurie started seriously writing.
6. At first, Ms. Lurie stated, she began to write to amuse herself as well as others. Her satires of marriage and manners could be savage, and her work are often compared to that of Jane Austen.
7. Her first novel, Love and Friendship, was published in 1962. It is set in a small New England town and tells of chauvinism and claustrophobia of academic life in suburbia.
8. In 1969 Alison Laurie attended a writer’s retreat in Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. She did not like the retreat, did not return, and wrote about it in her novella Real People fictionalizing the names and places.
9. Alison Laurie combined a career as an academic and an author, as well as being popular in the United States and Europe.
10. She won many prizes and honors, including the Prix Femina étanger(1989), fellowships, and doctorates.

Books by Alison Lurie*

Zohar – Man of la Book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account, the money is usually spent on books

Sources:

About Alison Lurie | AlisonLurie.com

Alison Lurie | Wikipedia

Alison Lurie, Tart-Voiced Novelist of Manners, Dies at 94 | New York Times

Alison Lurie obituary | The Guardian

Foreign Affairs, by Alison Lurie (Random House) | Pulitzer.org