ALICE SEBOLD

'Alice Sebold' (b. September 6, 1962 in Madison, Wisconsin) is a bestselling American writer. She has published two books, ''Lucky'' and ''The Lovely Bones''. A third book, ''The Almost Moon,'' is due to be published in late 2007.

Contents

Early life

Career

Works

References

External links

Early life

Sebold grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and graduated from Great Valley High School in Malvern, Pennsylvania in 1980. She then enrolled in Syracuse University.

When she was 18 years old and a freshman at Syracuse, she was attacked, beaten and brutally raped in a nearby park. Following the incident, Sebold went back to her dorm where a security guard called an ambulance. After some months at home Sebold returned to Syracuse to finish her bachelor’s degree and study writing. Months later, while walking down a street near the Syracuse campus, she recognized her rapist and secured his arrest.
Following graduation from Syracuse, Sebold went to Texas for graduate school. Then she moved to Manhattan and lived there for 10 years. She held several jobs as a waitress and tried to pursue her writing career. ^[1] Sebold wanted to write her story through poetry, but that, and attempts at writing a novel, did not come to fruition. She used heroin recreationally for two years, though claims she never became addicted. ^[2] Sebold recounted her substance abuse to students at an ''Evening of Fiction'' workshop by saying that, "I did a lot of things that I am not particularly proud of and that I can’t believe that I did." ^[3]

Sebold left the city and moved to Southern California, where she became a caretaker of an arts colony, earning $386 a month and living in a cabin in the woods without electricity. She would write by propane candlelight. Later, Sebold applied to graduate school at University of California, Irvine in 1995.

Career

While at UCI Sebold began writing ''Lucky'', a memoir of her rape. She named the book from a police officer who told Sebold that she was "lucky" for not being killed because a girl was raped and killed in the same place she was attacked. The story began while writing a ten-page assignment for class, though Sebold eventually wrote 40 pages.

After publishing ''Lucky'' in 1999, Sebold continued her writing career. She published the bestselling novel ''The Lovely Bones'' in 2002. The book is the story of a 14-year-old girl who is raped and murdered. She tells her story from her personalized Heaven looking down as her family tries to cope with her death and her killer escapes the police. While working on ''The Lovely Bones'' in 1995, Sebold met her husband Glen David Gold at UCI. He arrived late for one of his classes and could not remove his motorcycle helmet, and they began talking. They were married in November 2001. ^[4]

In an interview conducted by Ann Darby of ''Publishers Weekly'', Sebold said of ''The Lovely Bones'': "I was motivated to write about violence because I believe it's not unusual. I see it as just a part of life, and I think we get in trouble when we separate people who've experienced it from those who haven't. Though it's a horrible experience, it's not as if violence hasn't affected many of us." ^[5]
Sebold won the American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award for Adult Fiction in 2003 ^[6] and the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel in 2002. She was also nominated in the Novel category in that year. ^[7]
Peter Jackson is currently slated to make ''The Lovely Bones'' into a film, set to be released in 2007. ^[8]

Works

★ ''Lucky'' (memoir, 2002; originally published in 1999), Back Bay Books, ISBN 0-316-66634-3

★ ''The Lovely Bones'' (2002), Little, Brown ISBN 0-316-66634-3

★ ''The Almost Moon'' (2007), Little, Brown

References

1. [1]
2. [2]
3. [3]
4. [4]
5. [5]
6. [6]
7. [7]
8. [8]

External links

★

★

★ ''Meet the Writers'' at ''Barnes & Noble'' (includes detailed interview from the July/August 2002 issue of ''Book'' magazine)

★ Collection of newspaper articles

★ Interview at Powells.com

★ Video clip showing the BBC interview

★ THE LOVELY BONES Reading Group Guide

★ LUCKY Reading Group Guide