Maile Meloy biography

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Maile Meloy
Photo: Nancy Crampton

Maile Meloy

How to pronounce Maile Meloy: first name is pronounced my-lee. Last name is pronounced maloy

Maile Meloy Biography

Maile Meloy is the author of the novels Liars and Saints, A Family Daughter, and Do Not Become Alarmed; the short story collections Half in Love and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (named one of the "10 Best Books of 2009" by the New York Times Book Review); and a bestselling middle-grade trilogy. Her fiction has won the Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Meloy was shortlisted for the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction and chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.

Maile Meloy's website

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Interview

Maile Meloy answers a handful of frequently asked questions in the wake of the publication of Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It

What are you reading?
Cheating at Canasta, by William Trevor, which led someone to ask me why anyone would cheat at a game like canasta.  (The answer from the story: the character cheats to let his wife, who's losing her memory, win.)  I just finished the incredible Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel.  Also The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, and Marisa Silver's wonderful new collection, Alone With You.  Other books I've loved lately: Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman, and Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. 
And it's a movie, not a book, but the documentary Prodigal Sons is wonderful, and set in my hometown. 

What advice do you have for writers who have trouble focusing?
Set aside time to write, even if it's only an hour or two a day, and think of the time as the requirement.  So you just have to be there, and it doesn't matter what you finish.  I think it takes the pressure off the individual story or chapter, and you'll end up working on the ideas that seem most promising.  I start many, many stories and abandon most of them, but eventually some pay off.

Do you like writing short stories or novels better? ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Maile Meloy at BookBrowse
Do Not Become Alarmed jacket The Apprentices jacket The Apothecary jacket Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It jacket
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