It's the 'Rhythm' of Each Sentence

“Read everything, write all the time.  And if you can do anything else that gives you equal pleasure and allows you to sleep soundly at night, do that instead.  The writing life is an odd one, to say the least.”– Alice McDermott
Born in Brooklyn, NY, on this date in 1953, McDermott is a writer of numerous short stories and 8 novels as well as  Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.  All of her novels have earned accolades and awards, led by Charming Billy, for which she won both the American Book Award and  the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. 
The product of  Catholic elementary and high schools, she studied at state universities after that, earning degrees in English and writing.  Prior to her current position, she served aswriter-in-residence at both Lynchburg College and Hollins College in Virginia and was lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire, where she earned her Master’s degree.            Her short stories have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, journals and newspapers including Redbook, The New Yorker, and Seventeen, The New York Times and The Washington Post.   What makes writing click for her?
“I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described,” she said.  “That's what I love when I read.”


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