Maureen Corrigan | |
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| Born | Maureen D. Corrigan (1955-07-30)July 30, 1955 (age 69) New York City, US[1] |
| Occupation |
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| Alma mater | Fordham University University of Pennsylvania |
| Genres | Criticism,nonfiction |
| Years active | 1981– |
| Notable works | So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures (2014) |
| Notable awards | 1999Edgar Award for Best Critical Work[2] 2018 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[3] |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | |
| maureencorrigan | |
Maureen Corrigan (born July 30, 1955) is an American author, scholar, and literary critic. She is the book critic on theNPR radio programFresh Air and writes for the "Book World" section ofThe Washington Post. In 2014, she wroteSo We Read On, a book on the origins and power ofThe Great Gatsby. In 2005, she published a literary memoirLeave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books. Corrigan was awarded the 2018Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by theNational Book Critics Circle for her reviews onFresh Air on NPR and inThe Washington Post,[3] and the 1999Edgar Award for Criticism by theMystery Writers of America for her bookMystery & Suspense Writers, co-authored with Robin W. Cook.
Maureen Corrigan was born on July 30, 1955, and raised inQueens, New York, to a working-class family.[1] Corrigan holds a B.A. degree fromFordham University, as well as anM.A. andPh.D from theUniversity of Pennsylvania.
Corrigan is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism atGeorgetown University[4] where she began teaching in 1989.[1] Her specialist subjects include the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the literature of New York City, Public Intellectuals in America, American Detective Fiction and Contemporary Literature. Her first book reviews were published inThe Village Voice while she was in the graduate school at University of Pennsylvania.[1]
Corrigan serves on the advisory council of theAmerican Writers Museum. She served as a juror for the2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and as a member of the advisory panel ofThe American Heritage Dictionary and an advisor to theNational Endowment of the Arts "Big Read" project.[4]
Corrigan has been a book critic forNPR on thePeabody Award-winningFresh Air radio program for three decades.[1][4][5][6] She is a reviewer and columnist for the "Book World" section ofThe Washington Post since 1990,[1] and essays and reviews written by her have appeared in publications such asThe Wall Street Journal,The Village Voice,The New York Times,The Nation,The New York Observer,Salon andThe Philadelphia Inquirer.[6]
Along withRobin Winks, she was an associate editor of and contributor toMystery & Suspense Fiction (Scribner, 1999), a work which won theEdgar Award for Criticism fromMystery Writers of America in 1999, for both authors.[2][4][5]
She wrote about the novelDavid Copperfield by Charles Dickens inThe Books That Changed My Life.[7]
Corrigan investigates what makesF. Scott Fitzgerald'sThe Great Gatsby so captivating and influential, through "archives, high school classrooms, and even out onto theLong Island Sound, to explore the novel's hidden depths, a journey whose revelations include Gatsby's surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and its profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender."[8]
Corrigan pinpoints restlessness as a quintessential American quality, one she perceives in Fitzgerald's knowing depiction of New York City, the great mecca for dreamers with its promise of freedom, new identities, success, and "unsentimental sex." She explains why she considersThe Great Gatsby to be "America's greatest novel about class" as well as the vanquishing of God and the worship of idols in the aftermath of World War I, the fantasy that one can truly reinvent one's self, the grandeur of longing, and the spell of illusion.[9]
Corrigan has written a literary memoir,Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books, first published in 2005, which reviews the books that most influenced her personally, belonging in the main to three non-canonical genres – female extreme-adventure tales (narratives recounting "private tests of endurance" in women's lives), hard-boiled detective novels, and Catholic-martyr narratives.[10] The main focus of the book, however, is on the first extreme adventure tales, and Corrigan observes that narratives themed around female suffering are today breaking with a millennia-old tradition.[10] Where women used to suffer in silence, all the while plotting under a surface of stillness – likePenelope inHomer'sOdyssey, who has to put up for years with unwanted suitors – in more recent narratives women begin to act: they talk back, and fight.[10][11]
Corrigan was awarded the 2018Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by theNational Book Critics Circle for her reviews onFresh Air on NPR[3] and inThe Washington Post, and the 1999Edgar Award for Criticism by theMystery Writers of America for her bookMystery & Suspense Writers, co-authored with Robin W. Cook.[2]
Corrigan lives inWashington, D.C., with her husband and daughter.[4][12]
