Understanding Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott—winner of the National Book Award, American Book Award, and Whiting Award, and three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—recently published her eighth novel, The Ninth Hour , to great critical and popular acclaim. Her previous books, including Charming Billy, At Weddings and Wakes , and That Night , have been lauded as crowning achievements of Irish American fiction. An Irish American Catholic born and raised in New York, McDermott uses multiple identities and a distinctive, non