“I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described. That's what I love when I read.”

American writer and university professor

Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. Born in 1953, she is known for nine novels and a collection of essays, and for the literary awards her work has received. Her 1998 novel Charming Billy won both an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction, and was also a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Absolution, received the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.