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Melissa Bank Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

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

Melissa Bank

Melissa Bank

Melissa Bank Biography

Melissa Bank was an American author. She attended Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and had an MFA from Cornell University. Her works include The Girls' Guide to Hunting, Fishing, a volume of short stories: The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine, and The Wonder Spot.

Bank was the winner of the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction.

She died August 2, 2022, in East Hampton, New York, after a struggle with lung cancer.



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Interview

Join us in a brief conversation with Melissa Bank as she discusses The Girls’ Guide as it relates to “single-women titles” and whether a writer’s gender is relevant to a work of modern fiction.

Q. The women in The Girls' Guide have a hard time resisting stereotypically feminine behavior. Is it harder for women to resist girlie clichés than for men to resist macho ones? How does the battle differ?

A. Everybody has had a Jamie boyfriend, the rudderless young guy, the free spirit. How do you explain the incredible consistency of the contemporary romantic experience?

Q. Prefacing your interview in Salon, Cynthia Joyce made reference to "a slew of other recently published single-women titles." Is this a new genre? What's the literary legacy behind it? How would you say writers like Jane Austen or Sylvia Plath relate to this new work from women writers? How would you characterize this new wave of female voices?

A. How is a writer's gender relevant to a work of modern fiction? We've had women's magazines for a long time, but now there are women's Web sites and women's cable channels, among other girl-centric media. What are your views about this trend? Is there such a thing as a women's movie or book?

Q. Do you feel that The Girls' Guide is a feminist book? Why or why not?

A. Nature is mostly absent from Jane's world. She loves dogs and the beach, but ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Melissa Bank at BookBrowse
The Wonder Spot jacket The Girl's Guide To Hunting & Fishing jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Melissa Bank but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

We recommend 6 similar authors

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