Lionel Shriver | |
|---|---|
 Shriver in 2011 | |
| Born | Margaret Ann Shriver (1957-05-18)May 18, 1957 (age 68) Gastonia, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Occupation | Journalist, novelist |
| Education | Columbia University (BA,MFA) |
| Notable works | We Need to Talk About Kevin |
| Spouse | |
Lionel Shriver (bornMargaret Ann Shriver; May 18, 1957) is an American author and journalist. Her novelWe Need to Talk About Kevin won theOrange Prize for Fiction in 2005.[1]
Shriver was born Margaret Ann Shriver, inGastonia, North Carolina, to a religious family. Her father, Donald,[2] was aPresbyterian minister who became an academic and president of theUnion Theological Seminary in New York;[3] her mother was a homemaker.[4] At age 15, Shriver changed her name from Margaret Ann to Lionel because, being atomboy, she felt a conventionally masculine name was more appropriate.[5]
Shriver was educated atBarnard College ofColumbia University (BA,MFA).[5] She has lived inNairobi,Bangkok,Belfast, andLondon, and currently resides inPortugal.[5][4][6] She has taughtmetalsmithing atBuck's Rock Performing and Creative Arts Camp inNew Milford, Connecticut.[7]
Shriver had written seventeen novels, of which seven had been published, before she wroteWe Need to Talk About Kevin, which she called her "make or break" novel because of the years of "professional disappointment" and "virtual obscurity" preceding it.
In an interview withBomb magazine, Shriver listed the various subjects of her novels up to the publication ofWe Need to Talk About Kevin: "anthropology and first love; rock-and-roll drumming and immigration; theNorthern IrishTroubles; demography and epidemiology; inheritance; tennis and spousal competition;terrorism andcults of personality". Rather than writing traditionally sympathetic characters, Shriver prefers to create characters who are "hard to love."[8]
We Need to Talk About Kevin was awarded the 2005Orange Prize for Fiction.[9] The novel is a study of maternal ambivalence, and the role it might have played in the title character's decision tomurder nine people at his high school. It provoked much controversy and achieved success through word of mouth.[10] Shriver said this about the novel's success:
I'm often asked did something happen around the time I wroteKevin. Did I have some revelation or transforming event? The truth is thatKevin is of a piece with my other work. There's nothing special aboutKevin. The other books are good too. It just tripped over an issue that was just ripe for exploration and by some miracle found its audience.[11]
The novel was adapted into the 2011film of the same name, starringTilda Swinton andEzra Miller.[12]
In 2009, Shriver donated the short story "Long Time, No See" toOxfam's "Ox-Tales" project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in theFire collection.[13] Shriver's next novel,So Much for That, was published on March 2, 2010.[14] In this novel, Shriver presents a biting criticism of theU.S. health care system. It was named as a finalist for theNational Book Award in fiction.[15] Her next work,The New Republic, was published in 2012. It had existed since 1998, but had failed to find a publisher at the time.[16] Her 2013 book,Big Brother: A Novel, was inspired by the morbid obesity of one of her brothers.[17]
In 2014 Shriver won the BBC National Short Story Award for her story Kilifi Creek.[18]
The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047, published in May 2016, is an "acid satire"[19] set in a near future in which the United States is unable to repay its national debt and Mexico has built a wall on its northern border to keep out US citizens trying to escape with their savings.[20] Members of the moneyed Mandible family must contend with disappointment and struggle to survive after losing the inheritance on which they had been counting.[21]
Shriver's most recent novel,Mania, described inThe Observer as "novel about a cancelled lecturer in a parallel dystopia that prizes ignorance", was published by Borough Press in 2024.[22]
Shriver has written forThe Wall Street Journal, theFinancial Times,The New York Times,The Economist,Harper's Magazine, and other publications,[23] plus the Radio Ulster programTalkback.[24] In July 2005, Shriver began writing a column forThe Guardian,[25] in which she shared her opinions on maternal disposition within Western society, the pettiness of British government authorities, and the importance of libraries (she plans to will whatever assets remain at her death to the Belfast Library Board).[11][26]
Shriver currently writes forThe Spectator,[4] and occasionally contributes to the "Comment" page ofThe Times.
Shriver described herself as a "lifelongDemocrat" in 2022.[27] She reported voting forJoe Biden in the2020 U.S. presidential election.[27] In September 2022, Shriver released an open letter in which she endorsed RepublicanRon DeSantis for the2024 U.S. presidential election. In the letter, she criticized both Biden andDonald Trump as poor leaders, and praised DeSantis for his handling of theCOVID-19 pandemic, banningcritical race theory in schools, opposingtransgender involvement in women's sports, and passing theFlorida Parental Rights in Education Act, while noting that she disagrees with him on abortion.[27]
In May 2010, Shriver criticized the American health system in an interview while at theSydney Writers' Festival in Australia, in which she said she was "exasperated with the way that medical matters were run in my country" and considers that she is taking "my life in my hands. Most of all I take my bank account in my hands because if I take a wrong turn on my bike and get run over by a taxi, I could lose everything I have."[28][29]
As the 2016 keynote speaker at theBrisbane Writers' Festival, Shriver gave a controversial speech critical of the concept ofcultural appropriation[30][31] which led the festival to "pull its links to Shriver's speech and publicly disavow her point of view."[32] Shriver had previously been criticized for her depiction of Latino and African American characters in her bookThe Mandibles, which was described by one critic as racist and by another as politically misguided.[33][34] In her Writers' Festival speech, Shriver contested these criticisms of her book, stating that writers should be entitled to write from any perspective, race, gender or background that they choose.[35][31]
In June 2018, she criticized an effort by the publisherPenguin Random House to diversify the authors that it published and better represent the population, saying that it prioritized diversity over quality and that a manuscript "written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven" would be published "whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling". Penguin Random House marketer and authorCandice Carty-Williams criticized the statements.[36] As a result of her comments Shriver was dropped from judging a competition for the magazineMslexia.[37]
Shriver expressed her opposition towoke andidentity politics in a 2021 interview with theEvening Standard, stating that "I don't like discrimination of any kind" but adding "there is nothing malign, initially at least, in the impulse to pursue a fairer society. The biggest problem with the 'woke' is their methods – too often involving name calling, silencing, vengefulness, and predation."[38]
Shriver has argued against migration into the UK; in 2021, she wrote an article that stated "For westerners to passively accept and even abet incursions by foreigners so massive that the native-born are effectively surrendering their territory without a shot fired is biologically perverse."[39][40][41] She is a patron of Britishpopulation growth rate concern groupPopulation Matters,[42] and supportedBrexit.[4]
An outspoken critic of what she describes as a "deeply disturbing social obsession with transgenderism" and following the arrest ofGraham Linehan when he arrived at Heathrow airport[43] in September 2025 Shriver said she is now scared to travel to the UK. "The Graham Linehan story really makes me nervous on my own account. I had a completely selfish reaction to that story, because I'm worried that, given what I have put into print, I could be arrested the next time I come to the UK."[44]
Shriver married jazz drummerJeff Williams in 2003.[45] They live in Portugal.[46]
On June 7, 2016, Shriver appeared on theBBC Radio 4 programmeMy Teenage Diary, during which she read extracts from her journals from the late 1960s and early 1970s and discussed her upbringing and adolescence.[47][48][49]
In the summer of 2024, Shriver was diagnosed withGuillain-Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder, whereby the body attacks its own nervous system and the musculature dissolves. She described the impact in an article forThe Free Press: "I went from sets of 500 sit-ups to being unable to do one. GBS melted the biceps from my two regular 70/60 sets of push-ups into wrinkly bingo wings. My calf muscles from countless thousands of burpees and mountain climbers vanished—leaving droops of crenulated skin as souvenirs. At first, I could only lift a cup of coffee using both hands. I couldn't turn over in bed. I've had to learn to stand and then to walk, slowly, tremulously, from scratch."[50]
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